What's something modern you won't miss when it becomes obsolete?

[Stearmen]

They say, when you are lying there on your death bed, the things you regret most, aren't the things you did do, but the things you didn't do! I am pretty sure the days I did not work will not be one of them.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

I quite agree. I have never felt any need to be always "connected". When cell phones first came out in force, I shunned them because I wanted to be left alone and unbothered whenever i left the house. I didn't want to be bothered by telemarketers, and the whole status symbol idea of owning an expensive piece of mostly useless tech gear never appealed to me. So I am an outcast. So be it. Sure, a cell phone would come in handy in the event of an emergency, but the whole status symbol aspect of it has always left me cold.
I remember an incident in the late 90s. I was just stopping at the grocery store for a few things after work one evening. This guy in line in front of me just has to whip out his new phone and call someone. The conversation I heard was something like,..."Yeah,....what's up?"...."Oh nuthin,...just gonna go watch the game." ... "ok,...seeya."
The caller had no real reason to even call the recipient of his call. I think he was just proudly showing off his fancy new expensive cell phone for the cashier and I. Convinced me then and there though that I really don't "need" one myself.

People react with shock when they ask for my cell number and I tell them I don't have one. And then, more often than not, they get defensive, as if the fact that I don't have, need, or want a cellphone is somehow a direct challenge to their own worldview. "Well," they'll say, "I need one for work/to keep track of the kids/to stay connected/whatever," even though I didn't at any time question them or even comment on their use of the technology. Modern smartphone society has all the hallmarks of a true-believer cult, in which the outsider is seen as a challenge to the belief system and not just as someone who doesn't subscribe to those beliefs.

And that's why I believe they're dangerous.

 

[jamespowers]

I quite agree. I have never felt any need to be always "connected". When cell phones first came out in force, I shunned them because I wanted to be left alone and unbothered whenever i left the house. I didn't want to be bothered by telemarketers, and the whole status symbol idea of owning an expensive piece of mostly useless tech gear never appealed to me. So I am an outcast. So be it. Sure, a cell phone would come in handy in the event of an emergency, but the whole status symbol aspect of it has always left me cold.
I remember an incident in the late 90s. I was just stopping at the grocery store for a few things after work one evening. This guy in line in front of me just has to whip out his new phone and call someone. The conversation I heard was something like,..."Yeah,....what's up?"...."Oh nuthin,...just gonna go watch the game." ... "ok,...seeya."
The caller had no real reason to even call the recipient of his call. I think he was just proudly showing off his fancy new expensive cell phone for the cashier and I. Convinced me then and there though that I really don't "need" one myself.

Yeah the cell phone as a status symbol. Riiiigghhhtttt.....:rofl:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Remember those ridiculous looking antennae mounted on the back of luxury cars in the '90s? HEY LOOK AT ME YOU PEONS IM TALKING TO MY BROKER RIGHT HERE IN MY CAR.

Yeah, and I'm tuning you in at my office on my police scanner. And from what I'm hearing, your broker must also be your mistress. Real entertainment was to be had in those days.

 

[jamespowers]

Remember those ridiculous looking antennae mounted on the back of luxury cars in the '90s? HEY LOOK AT ME YOU PEONS IM TALKING TO MY BROKER RIGHT HERE IN MY CAR.

Yeah, and I'm tuning you in at my office on my police scanner. And from what I'm hearing, your broker must also be your mistress. Real entertainment was to be had in those days.

lol lol

 

[Zombie_61]

Yeah the cell phone as a status symbol. Riiiigghhhtttt.....:rofl:

I remember stopping for breakfast on my way to work one day in the mid-80s, and there was a guy at the next table using a monstrosity that looked something like this:

He didn't appear to be enjoying his "status". lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had one of those at the radio station for broadcasting remotes. The only time I ever used it, I was lying in a drainage ditch reporting from an armed standoff where a crazed ex-cop was holding his wife hostage. It kept cutting out, and by the time I got it working right, they'd bagged the guy. I never trusted it again.

 

[jamespowers]

We had one of those at the radio station for broadcasting remotes. The only time I ever used it, I was lying in a drainage ditch reporting from an armed standoff where a crazed ex-cop was holding his wife hostage. It kept cutting out, and by the time I got it working right, they'd bagged the guy. I never trusted it again.

Those things were notorious for being just like that.

 

[Stearmen]

I quite agree. I have never felt any need to be always "connected". When cell phones first came out in force, I shunned them because I wanted to be left alone and unbothered whenever i left the house. I didn't want to be bothered by telemarketers, and the whole status symbol idea of owning an expensive piece of mostly useless tech gear never appealed to me. So I am an outcast. So be it. Sure, a cell phone would come in handy in the event of an emergency, but the whole status symbol aspect of it has always left me cold.
I remember an incident in the late 90s. I was just stopping at the grocery store for a few things after work one evening. This guy in line in front of me just has to whip out his new phone and call someone. The conversation I heard was something like,..."Yeah,....what's up?"...."Oh nuthin,...just gonna go watch the game." ... "ok,...seeya."
The caller had no real reason to even call the recipient of his call. I think he was just proudly showing off his fancy new expensive cell phone for the cashier and I. Convinced me then and there though that I really don't "need" one myself.

You do realize that when they came out, both the telephone and light bulb were a status symbol. In fact, in mansions across the country, it was common to have the bulb with no shade so all could see, look at me, I have electricity! Even I have a smart phone, every one in my motorcycle club has one, hardly a status symbol. They are now, quite ubiquitous! Like a land line in the 1980s, no big deal.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You haven't watched a group of teenage girls preening over their respective smartphones, one-upping each other on how like totally kewl they are. Around this part of the country they are still very much status symbols, especially among children of privilege who show how privileged they are by replacing theirs a couple times a year.

 

[3fingers]

I have carried a work phone for many years. The "status" wore off long ago. I have noticed the expectation of employers to have people available 24/7 has increased all along the way to where now there seems to be no escape short of leaving their employment. Which I have been considering. Being on call and working the hours I sometimes do has served as an example to my children to try to plan their career path better than I did.

 

[vintage68]

Being "on call" for work is the worst....

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

You haven't watched a group of teenage girls preening over their respective smartphones, one-upping each other on how like totally kewl they are. Around this part of the country they are still very much status symbols, especially among children of privilege who show how privileged they are by replacing theirs a couple times a year.

Tell them that they're like being sooooo 1999. Duh!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've seen some of these kids get into arguments and end up throwing their phones at each other. I always suggest they try that with *my* phone.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

You do realize that when they came out, both the telephone and light bulb were a status symbol. In fact, in mansions across the country, it was common to have the bulb with no shade so all could see, look at me, I have electricity!

Towards the end of World War II when the Red Army captured Berlin particular favorite items that were looted were light bulbs and faucets. Many Soviet soldiers were peasants from the kolkhoz*who grew up without electricity or plumbing. And a great many of the kolkhozniks thought that by simply plugging them into the wall they would have electricity and water.

*Soviet collective farm

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was right around the time my grandparents got electricity. My grandmother kept a kerosene lamp around the house forever after, "just in case it didn't last."

 

[vintage68]

I watched a movie recently where the main character was certain the automobile wouldn't last. Wish he had been right!

 

[rjb1]

The discussion of attitudes toward electricity and lightbulbs in the early years reminds me of one of my favorite James Thurber quotes:
From "The Car We had to Push"
"She came naturally by her confused and groundless fears, for her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. It leaked, she contended, out of empty sockets if the wall switch had been left on. She would go around screwing in bulbs, and if they lighted up she would hastily and fearfully turn off the wall switch and go back to her Pearson's or Everybody's, happy in the satisfaction that she had stopped not only a costly but a dangerous leakage. Nothing could ever clear this up for her."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Plastic "squeezy bottles" that you have to hack apart with scissors to get out the last bit of mustard. Unless you want to throw away two or three spoonsful. Such bottles are right up there with "lather rinse repeat" on the list of great and wasteful marketing swindles.

 

[dh66]

Plastic "squeezy bottles" that you have to hack apart with scissors to get out the last bit of mustard. Unless you want to throw away two or three spoonsful. Such bottles are right up there with "lather rinse repeat" on the list of great and wasteful marketing swindles.

You haven't seen wasteful until you've seen a four year old putting mustard on a hot dog from one of those kind of bottles......