The idea is very different than the reality. The freedom of information, communication, and variety are so much better now.
Need a job, get a newspaper for classified ads and take whatever you can get, or start calling friends and networking when you’re lucky to get a voicemail.
Want to unwind and watch something? You can spend all evening flipping through channel after channel of garbage.
Need to learn something, prepare to spend days going to different public libraries to find anything useful. Most people don’t learn anything. Most people’s only adult social connection is though religion. It is a small dumb world where I grew up.
One thing I would not take for granted is the massive amount of information out there for repairing/ fixing things in your home. If you have an issue with your lawn mower, I guarantee that someone recorded a video of how to fix it step by step. It is absolutely mind boggling what we have at our finger tips.
Same for things like learning music. Back in the day if you didn’t know another good musician, you’d have to gradually piece together different techniques, chords, etc. yourself. Stuff that took me years to figure out you can learn in minutes now.___
It was probably somewhat beneficial that we all had to go outside and do something through; but yeah in smaller places your only real option would be a church or bar. I miss being able to hang out at the mall, for example; where you’d bump into your friends etc and different groups where there. Was sometimes like a big party. Then again, I was also a kid, we still had arcades that weren’t just dirty ticket casinos.
I called my grandfather when I wanted to learn something. The library was the backup if he didn’t know. He was a well educated engineer, and my grandmother also had a university education and an excellent knowledge of literature.
I wouldn’t mind killing off social media, but I have offline copies of Wikipedia for a reason. That shit is important.
I used to send emails to libraries for information on a certain topic and got back lots of information
How do you get an email address for a library that is actually monitored by a human that would respond?
Libraries provide it as a free service. It’s called virtual reference. Here is one such service I found by searching.
Yes, the amount of time you spent just isolated and bored was unfathomable to people today.
Ah, the good old remantization of the things you don’t know.
If they’re so eager about it, they can try taking their hands off the phone, for change.
But that doesn’t take away that other people will be on their phone when you’re with them
Doesn’t change expectations of others for you to respond to work emails or other shit at all hours. Doesn’t bring back the days of concert going paying attention instead of 800 phones being held up to record some shitty angle that will never be watched again, or people being rude while checking out, or distracted driving.
Doesn’t change expectations of others for you to respond to work emails or other shit at all hours.
That was still a thing before the internet/cellphones. My dad would receive phone calls at home at all hours back in the 90s and he was just a low level manager. He just pretended to not be home. When work gave him a cell phone, he would just turn it off when he left work and pretend his phone died.
I have to wonder if the real discussion here is between ‘pre-internet’ or ‘not the internet where you’re the product being sold and sold to’, because I strongly suspect it’s the latter that’s the issue here.
I’m just barely old enough to recall how things worked before the internet and I don’t think people would ever really want to go back to not being able to watch anything they want, any time they want, or not having turn-by-turn directions or even things like ordering a pizza by having to call someone on the phone.
No way, maps and GPS are far too useful.
I wonder if ‘majority of Americans’ really means the guy who wrote this article.
Though in all seriousness I just cannot comprehend that there are people out there who really think the negatives of all this tech outweigh the positives.
Imagine going on a road trip and getting stuck somewhere 3 hours from home with no cell phone
As an elder millenial, I wonder if the only people they asked were elder millenials and boomers? Because I certainly wouldn’t like to go back. Sure, I have a certain romanticism about the past (90s were the best, etc etc), I got to experience growing up both before and during the technological boom which gave a sort of “generational/technological whiplash” in a unique time in history. I remember using a corded button dial phone and the actual rotary phone my parents used to keep around for nostalgia.
But man, the internet, for better or worse, opened my eyes to so many things that I would’ve been oblivious to if not for that. So many social causes, injustices, climate and political issues, so many different communities. If it wasn’t for the internet, I never would have met a great community in college that ended up gaining me a lot of friends and a job, and so many wonderful experiences. If not for cell phones, I’d have no way of calling for help when my car broke down (one of many times) in the middle of the expressway at night, or when making plans with friends or trying to find directions to some place.
No thanks, I would very much like to stay in the present.
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I was just thinking this earlier today. Life just seemed more simple.
Yeah, it was. But only because it was in the 80s and I was in my early teens back then. I don’t think the world was much simpler though. I was just looking at it through oblivious eyes of youth…
Cold War was in its heyday. Russia was at war, just like today. Ronald Regan came to power. There were bloody and terrible terrorist attacks. Chernobyl blew up etc etc.
It was a shitshow.
I wouldn’t… No GPS or computerized banking, having to go to a physical store or order from a crappy catalog. Nah, no way would I ever.
