Technology

37712 readers

219 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

Los@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

161

Majority of Americans Would Like to Return to Time Before Cell Phones, Internet, According to New Poll (www.thewrap.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Los@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

184 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] WHARRGARBL@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People forget, or just weren’t around, when only the rich had a mobile phone the size of waffle iron and it just made expensive calls. Even early cells had exorbitant rates for long distance conversations between states, so we had to wait until night when it was more affordable to talk. If I wanted to watch a specific movie, I needed a credit card with a $500 hold to rent a VHS player for 24 hours, and hope that Teenage Mutant Turtles wasn’t on a wait list. Ask Jeeves was better than encyclopedia brittanica, but digging deep required a trip to the public library. And scanning, copying, or printing anything meant driving to Kinkos with your checkbook ready. Anyone else remember pulling up MapQuest and writing down the directions before going someplace new?

Reminiscers can unplug, but I’m keeping my on-demand movies, cheap phone rates, endless knowledge, GPS, and streaming music.

[–] SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

In 1991 I lived in a small town. You had to sign up at the library for computer time. Once or twice a month I had the opportunity to walk to the library and play Oregon trail on an apple IIe with a green monochrome monitor. We were also fortunate enough to have a lab at school with the same apple IIe computers and got to use them every once in awhile. There wasn't any Internet for us to use, I don't recall anybody mentioning BBS or fido net or anything like that.

The most advanced computer I think I saw was in the school library. It had a cartridge based CD rom drive. I remember how awesome that was when I saw it.

It wasn't until around 95' that the internet really took off and we were actually able to use it. It was also around that time that we even got our first family computer and dial up service.

Before that we had an NES, SNES, and og Grey Gameboy. We also borrowed a commodore 64 for a time.

Before that we were typing essays on the electric typewriter we had.

I know everyone thinks all this retro tech is so cool. The thing is, as a kid, I had no idea this stuff even existed other than basic VHS players and Nintendo because things like PCs and laserdisc players were insanely expensive.

I'm sure there's stuff today that I'm blissfully unaware of because it's so far out of my price range that I have no business knowing about it anyway.