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The 1980s House
posted by Rob on 17 Jun 2008
Before the Internet
Poor Em; she's having to live like folk did back in the Eighties, or maybe the early Nineties. No home internet connection. We've talked on the phone a few times and it's absolutely extraordinary how often some conversational topic gets derailed because there can be no checking, or looking up or sharing or keeping up with things if there's no internet. I mean there could be, but it would hard work. For instance, I bet teletext still carries perfectly good weather-on-demand pages - no tedious waiting for the next major news bulletin - just some tedious waiting around for lots of ugly squares to assemble themselves on your TV screen. Plus I'm sure we could hook up a fax to exchange book covers and other images if there's not enough time to let the postman do it. And, I imagine 35-volume encyclopedia sets have really come down in price for anyone who doesn't have access to Wikipedia and isn't fussed about anything that happened recently.
But in some ways it's a return to a simpler time. A simpler time when half our long-distance interactions with others and the world at large were either difficult, impossible or undreamt of. Fingers crossed that Em can hold out until the right wires get hooked up. (In the meantime, you take your life in your hands if you go round there with a web-capable mobile phone about your person, I'll tell you.)
Comments: 5
At least Em will have plenty of time to do the big hair - very high maintenance, that.
Posted by: Sarah Bower | June 17, 2008 03:28 PM
I wonder if she will return a changed woman, a woman who decides to switch of t'internet one day a week and meditate rather than surf.
Posted by: sue hepworth | June 17, 2008 03:59 PM
I have meditated on this set of changes, and I think it's all a matter of time - before the 70's, you'd have to be content to wait to receive the new book covers in the post, because there wasn't even faxing. You'd have to be patient enough to look something up in an encyclopedia or at the library, rather than Wikipedia. I for one would like to have a return of worldwide patience without having to go without email. Can you imagine a life without FedEx, conceptually?
Posted by: KatharineC | June 18, 2008 01:24 PM
Katharine, the trade-off to speed is presumably geography. We'd have to prioritise something - maybe keeping down our commute time - and live somewhere appropriate to that criterion while losing out on other things, like a view and decent air quality. I'm all in favour of making geography irrelevant whenever possible. Without all this internet doo-hickery I'd actually have to live near someone to know of their existence (celebrities excluded). What a pain that would be.
Posted by: Rob | June 18, 2008 02:15 PM
When we first had t'internet installed, it was on a 28k modem and me and my dad had to take it in turns to use it.
First used t'internet in Uni in 1994 and running Netscape - Microsoft were so slow in catching onto the 'net bandwagon.
Posted by: Christopher Teague | June 20, 2008 12:12 AM