I'll cherry-pick and blend the various interviewees together:
There were definitely no emails from bosses or internet checks before going into the office.... [W]hen I got to my office, we’d all sit on barstools in the kitchen, passing back and forth newspapers and reading interesting stories out loud. It was like social media, I guess.... All my friends had my desk phone number. They used to do impressions of the voice I used when I answered my work phone.... If you called someone at work on their cellphone, maybe it would ring in a meeting or something. That would be terrible. Cellphones were for emergencies, or for calling people when you were drunk.... I would sometimes stay late to use the good internet at the office. They had DSL.... We really would just drive to someone’s house and see what they were doing. You and a couple people would be in the car and you’d be like, “Let’s go by Brian and Mike’s."... I always carried a book or the New Yorker with me, because in a time before cellphones, no one could call you to tell you they were going to be late, so you had to have something to read.... If someone didn’t show, you would sometimes have to call your home voicemail from a payphone, and put in your code, to see if they had left a message for you on your home phone.... I didn’t even have voicemail yet. I think I still had an answering machine, with a tape in it.... My roommate had a collection of like 20 VHS tapes. We would play a game where Person 1 would choose 5 VHS cassettes, and then we’d all take turns removing one until we were left with the one we’d watch that night.... I would get the Lands End catalog and you could call them to order all the stuff. You would call Mary Ann in Wisconsin and you would read the item number, and she would ask you what color, what size. You could ask advice—“Does that run small?” or whatever.... Sometimes you’d do a 30, 45-minute call with someone. That’s a big part of your night.... Now, if someone calls me on the phone, I’m like, “How violent of you to call me.”
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For reasons I won't go into, we had no internet at my house for about two weeks. We set up a digital antenna, which turned out to be pretty fun. It's oddly exciting not knowing what's going to be on or what the show will be about. There were some fun channels showing older movies and a channel that played reruns of each of the Star Trek series from OT through Enterprise. Even though I grew up watching TV that way, I've gotten used to just streaming whatever I want to watch. Of course, once our internet was restored we went right back to streaming.
What I hate more than anything is my kids trying to coordinate a family event (dinner at home? or maybe going out?) and there will be 20 tet messages - all of which are full of contradictions, typos and lack of consensus.
Just hit the icon for your brother (or sister) and TALK for God's sake.
Nor do Millennials believe that I walked to school in the 1950s (much less that it was uphill in both directions).
The time I used to spend picking a vhs movie at the video store, I now use filling up my accounts list with movies I won’t probably watch.
Go back to 1965 - party lines for telephones, one phone per house, one TV per house, one car per house, one major job/income for the home, children use as television channel changers or TV antenna holders, and so on and so forth ...
I remember when the remote control was introduced. You didn't even have to get out of your chair!
I'm impressed by the fact that the writer appears to have absolutely no conception of the fact that not every single person in the country works in an office environment.
Also, I know several people who completed a master's degree while spending 8 hours a day working their ass off on a shop floor.
The youngsters would be amazed.
Actually, I believe he does know better but he's just playing to a particular audience which lends a degree of dishonesty to the entire article.
It's Slate. Par for the course, I guess.
No. No they can't. Same as my generation largely unable to understand what it was like before cable TV etc.
Oh my gosh, yes.
And I'm from an even earlier era. I'd bring a book or a magazine if I had to stand in line at the local (very popular) cafeteria.
Now the cafeterias are all gone.
I clearly remember telling account execs not to "email" me about a project. Instead, come to my office and we'll talk. It saved time & confusion. That didn't last long.
Ha! I remember ordering from catalogs by phone. I had forgotten about that. I only did it if I wanted something “fast,” otherwise I used the USPS.
I'm sure you will get lots of similar stories from your readers, Ann. Here's one of mine:
The kids at grandma's house... need to make a call... they think the phone is broken as it is "humming". They had never heard a dial tone before.
If someone I called suggested that just my calling them was violent, they’d never have to fear violence from me again, ever.
What I find amazing having grown up in the described era is realizing now just how bad television resolution was, because it didn’t seem that way when I remember watching it.
Remember dropping film off, or mailing it out somewhere, and waiting anywhere from a day to two weeks or so to see the photos you took?
I remember calling to do a phone order with LL Bean and being dumbfounded when the lady told me the number I was calling from, and my name and address.
I first hooked up to cable tv, in 1990. Till then just antenna. We did get a VCR in the late 80's. That meant a lot of time shifting was happening
This echo..."back when I was a kid..." On a side note, I always thought we were poor, because I remember dad pulling up to the gas station, and telling the guy to put in $3 of gas. But looking back, gas was 20C a gallon. that would be 15 gal. a full tank.
This guy combines the status worship of a Boomer and the attention span of a Millennial.
To be in a time where someone who said a bad thing two towns over doesn't, and never will, affect you.
Blogger Rabel said...
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Actually, I believe he does know better but he's just playing to a particular audience which lends a degree of dishonesty to the entire article.
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6/20/23, 11:49 AM
As news has turned out to be: what does our audience want to hear?
tommyesq,
When we lived in South Sudan, we mailed film home to the US, and didn't see the results for several years. Believe me, I kept a very detailed photo log! (That was if it was Kodachrome; we could get Ektachrome or Tri-X processed in Nairobi.)
In 1991, Indonesia, you had to go to the telecom center and wait in line to call the USA and talk to my mom. so, really never did it.
I am not sure she even knew my address. Mind boggling.
"Allow 6-8 weeks for delivery"
When I was away in the service in 1970 I enough money to make one call a week to my girlfriend. I’d bill the charges to my dad’s phone them send him a check at the end of the month. Four or five 5 minute calls cost me $40 a month. In today’s money that’s about $400. One good thing is that long distance rates have gone way down since we got some competition.
"When we lived in South Sudan, we mailed film home to the US, and didn't see the results for several years."
Some day, my prints will come. Some day my prints will come!
I really appreciated the Happy Father's Day text. Meant so much to me. Well, she's coming up for a few days around the 4th, so that will have to do. Like Ann argued, every day is Father's Day!
In 2002 I didn't own a cell phone, still bought books in bookstores, and always watched the evening news.
Harun,
I use to process Tri-X and Pan-X in my bathroom. Of my parent's house. Printing was done commercially.
Nostalgia is fun but it hides what should be a somewhat terrifying prospect. As each new generation of tech comes online it largely obliterates the preceding generations, and we organize our processes in ways that rely on the new tech. That means the people who think we're going to fall back to the 1950s if some major SHTF disaster happens are completely wrong. All of that 1950s tech, and the skills and equipment to build it, is gone. We'll be lucky if we can establish a baseline of the 1850s.
I remember waiting in line at the bowling alley to play Pong. Then my total amazement when Space Invaders arrived. Then the mind blowing Galaga showed up. The ten year old me would be awed by the knowledge that I would run an arcade on a major college campus 10 years later.
Tim in VT:
LOL!!!
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