Technology

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.

Imagine going on a road trip and getting stuck somewhere 3 hours from home with no cell phone

Ah, the good old romantization 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.

Edit: typo

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.

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.

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.

@dystop bullshit.
you think you do, but you don't

I was just thinking this earlier today. Life just seemed more simple.