Everything's Amazing Right Now and Nobody's Happy
Louis C.K.'s clip on Conan is pretty funny.
When I was a kid, we had a rotary phone. You had to stand next to it while you talked. Zeroes took a long time to dial. (Of course you only had to dial 7 numbers most of the time.) If we weren't home, the phone just rang and we had no idea someone had called.
While you were driving, you could not make a phone call. Nor could you listen to music except what was on the radio. That's not true, actually: when I was about 13 they invented 8-track tape. However, your kids could not watch a movie in the back seat of the van. (They didn't have vans. They had station wagons.)
In fact, the only way to watch a movie was to go to the movie theater. Most towns had a movie theater that played one movie at a time. If you wanted to see a film by Bergman, Bertolucci, or Truffaut, unless it happened to be on late night tv, basically you were SOL unless the local college had a film series. If you loved a movie (say, 2001) you went back that week and saw it as many times as you could afford to. Then it was gone forever.
After 2am there was no more TV. They played the Star Spangled Banner, showed a picture of the flag, and went off the air.
If you wanted money, you went into the bank, which was only open till 3pm. And when you ran out of money, that was it. You couldn't buy any more stuff. Bank statements had to be balanced by hand. Using MATH.
If you went to another country, you were incommunicado. No one could afford to call you, and where would they call you, anyway? You would send postcards.
If someone had to write a scholarly paper or submit a proposal for a deadline, they had to make sure that it would get there in time via the mail.
So the next time you you get annoyed because your voice-to-text app misspells a word, stop a second...
While you were driving, you could not make a phone call. Nor could you listen to music except what was on the radio. That's not true, actually: when I was about 13 they invented 8-track tape. However, your kids could not watch a movie in the back seat of the van. (They didn't have vans. They had station wagons.)
In fact, the only way to watch a movie was to go to the movie theater. Most towns had a movie theater that played one movie at a time. If you wanted to see a film by Bergman, Bertolucci, or Truffaut, unless it happened to be on late night tv, basically you were SOL unless the local college had a film series. If you loved a movie (say, 2001) you went back that week and saw it as many times as you could afford to. Then it was gone forever.
After 2am there was no more TV. They played the Star Spangled Banner, showed a picture of the flag, and went off the air.
If you wanted money, you went into the bank, which was only open till 3pm. And when you ran out of money, that was it. You couldn't buy any more stuff. Bank statements had to be balanced by hand. Using MATH.
If you went to another country, you were incommunicado. No one could afford to call you, and where would they call you, anyway? You would send postcards.
If someone had to write a scholarly paper or submit a proposal for a deadline, they had to make sure that it would get there in time via the mail.
So the next time you you get annoyed because your voice-to-text app misspells a word, stop a second...
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