I was thinking about how much the world has changed since I was a kid. I kind of miss the days when you actually had to wait to see someone to tell them a story, or when getting a CD was a huge event. What’s something ‘old school’ you wish hadn’t disappeared?
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Being unavailable. As in, being reasonably sure people won’t repeatedly contact me, as if they expected me to be checking my phone 24/7.
I would say what I miss most is going to rent a movie with my parents on Fridays and Saturdays.
It really was a great way to be together as a family on the weekend.
I regret that I won’t be able to share that with my own children.
Being a child.
Same here. I feel like as a kid, I could just sit and draw for hours without a single notification or distraction. Everything felt so much more focused back then, life was definitely a lot simpler when our biggest worry was what was for lunch or playing outside until the streetlights came on.
Not having answers to any question available immediately. There’s a lot of good in having to think about a problem and reason your way to a possible answer. AI is making the brain drain even worse, and I genuinely worry that people are going to effectively lose the ability to critically think about issues.
I kind of miss the days when you actually had to wait to see someone to tell them a story
I specifically don’t tell stories much via text or social media for that very reason. I find it much more interesting to tell the story in person. And sometimes I don’t tell the story - not a big deal, either.
On a very long call, you’d eventually get so bothered by a little kink in the telephone cord twisting the wrong way that you’d spend the rest of the call untwisting it and retwisting it in the correct direction, and it was so soothing when you eventually accomplished it.
Buying a fresh map for use on a roadtrip and physically drawing the planned route on top of it with all the stops and notes, then hanging it up like a poster afterwards with all the photos from the trip.
Going to the record store and asking the clerk if they had anything new that was good, then heading into the listening booth to check it out.
Rushing home to check if any long-distance friends were online, on IRC or the bulletin boards. Greater asynchrony in communication, in general.
Just hopping on the bike and riding wherever we felt like for however long with no expectation of checking in or being able to be reached or recalled.
