I was born back in 1973, before Ipods, Ipads and Iphones! To communicate we would have to call each other from our houses! If you weren't home, then whoever was trying to reach you, just had to call back and try again later. Back in my day, there were no cell phones! Once you left the house, there was no other way to communicate. Sometimes I think those were easier times!! Today people can reach us no matter where we are!
When I was young I was one of four siblings! We had a busy household. We had one rotary telephone on the wall in the kitchen. I still remember that blue phone to this day! My sister would walk around while talking on the phone and inevitably get the cord wrapped around the lamp, and the next thing you would hear was CRASH! My sister broke at least three lamps and the stories still get told to this day!!!
With only one phone, you had to patiently await your turn to use it! If you were waiting for a call, you had to wait until the phone was free! There was no call waiting until I was in high school. Even when we finally did get call waiting, I think half the time I wouldn't get the message of who called!!! That's what happens when you are the youngest sibling!!! I believe I was in high school when we got our first cordless phone. That was a day to remember! My parents gave us the lecture on not dropping it because it was a luxury and they were afraid we would break it. The day we got call waiting was a day that you could hear cheers in the neighborhood! We still only had one phone, but the fact that we could receive a call while someone was on it was a big deal!!
We also only had one T.V. Being the youngest meant I didn't get to watch what I wanted very often! But as I get older, I appreciate the fact that with one T.V., that meant the family spent more time together in the same room. I still remember all being huddled in front of the T.V. when the space shuttle crashed in 1986. Today, most families have multiple TV’s with everyone in different rooms watching different shows!
We also didn't have email! We actually wrote letters to friends who didn't live nearby. We even had pen pals in school! We would keep in touch with another school through letter writing! Today if you ask a young child what a pen pal is, they most likely wouldn't know!!!
Back in college, a few of my friends got pagers! It didn't mean the person would call back right away, because they needed to be near a phone, but it was a step forward in technology! I got my first cell phone when I graduated college back in 1996. It was gigantic!! It was a flip phone and supposed to be used for emergencies only.
When I was in college we had a typewriter, which is how I typed all my papers. We used the library and encyclopedias to research projects. I didn’t get my first computer until I was married in 2001.
Times have changed and we now have four TVs, one landline phone (which never gets used), two laptops and a cell phone. I am still amazed at how much my Iphone does and how small it is! I am hoping to add an Apple laptop and an Ipad to the mix eventually! It is hard to believe how we ever survived without these modern day conveniences!
Julie, I love how you pointed out the benefit of having only one tv in the house. This was my experience growing up too, and my family spent almost all our time together hanging out in the family room (watching tv or not). One of my main concerns about technology today is how isolating it can be, and how sometimes it can encourage self-centeredness since everyone can immediately have what they want when they want it. (That sounds like what you said about sharing the phone, too!) I think I agree, reflecting on it, that sometimes with technology less is more, but at the same time it is hard to believe the world functioned for so long without all of our modern conveniences!
ReplyDeleteIn reading this blog post, it just shows how far technology has come in such a short amount of time. Julie got a cellphone after graduating college, and I got one during my senior year of high school, and now it seems as if every middle school student has a phone. This generation is growing up with so many technological tools at their disposal, where just 10 years ago this did not seem to be the case with most. While technology has it's place, I think like the idea, as Julie said of actually writing letters, and having pen-pals. While technology is very important, we cannot forget about past ways of communication, and the importance they can still have in the world.
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