Reflecting on the Things We’ve Lost to the Internet
The way we did things was very different not so long ago. Telephones, maps and photo albums are just some of the things that have changed in the Age of the Internet.
Three orange chairs, Palm Springs Art Museum 2022
First things first. I am no Luddite.
This post is by no means meant to be a soulful lament about how everything has gone to the wall, that all things technological are the worst thing for humanity and that, back then, life was better.
I've been reading 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet by Pamela Paul which has made me pause and think about the differences between the way I grew up in the 1970s & 80s and the digital environment my daughters are growing up in now.
Paul's book is a personal, almost wistful account of how technology has changed things we once enjoyed and other things we didn't.
“This is a book about our losses—the things we achingly miss, the things we hardly knew existed, the things to which we can give a hard adios—and about what their absence might mean.”
More than anything, I think, the thing we seem to have lost most of is having time.
There are things I love about the internet. Google maps, for example, saved me numerous times when we first moved to Canada while I navigated unfamiliar roads with unfamiliar roadsigns in an unfamiliar car. I bought a spiral-bound roadmap but in five years I've never used it. Not once.
I've gathered a few of Paul's lost things from her book, the ones that caught my attention the most, the ones that inspired some personal reflection. Read on to find out what you remember and, depending on your age, all the things you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Your Childhood
Boredom
Do you remember drifting around the house, flicking things across the table, clipping your sibling over the head, generally making mischief because You Were Bored?
Whenever we drifted over to my mum whining about having nothing to do she would always say, "Then go outside and play!"
Which we did. God knows what we got up to as we disappeared outside for hours while the telly sat in the corner, small and square and turned firmly Off.
For the longest time in the UK, there was no cable, no satellite, and no Sky network. Up until 1980, there were only three channels. Three! There was no phone to look at. No laptop to muse over. Nothing. What on earth did we do all day? Did your parents/caregivers even know where you were?
Benign Neglect
So when we did Go Outside, my sisters and I got up to all manner of things. We discovered one Summer the joys of jumping around the hay bales piled high in the farmer's barn next to our house. That was until my dad found out. We loved climbing to the top and leaping into the deep, soft mass of loose hay at the bottom, a cloud of hay dust puffing up around us. It's a good job my dad found us and not the farmer. We must've been gone for hours.
We often wandered around empty unlocked churches not to do anything bad, we liked the cool and the gloom of the ancient buildings. These were the village churches dotted around the Norfolk landscape where we lived at the time. We had bikes and time. A great combination. From the heat of the day, the cool of the church inside felt like air-conditioning.
When I was three years old I drowned a guinea pig by accident. The worst thing was the guinea pig wasn’t mine. We were looking after it for a family friend. I thought it needed a wash and put it in a bucket of water. When it stopped moving I sprinkled some of its food on top. My poor mum spent a week looking for a replacement before the family came back from their holiday.
What else? I broke my arm climbing a door frame. My hands slipped when I got to the top and I sat on my arm when I fell.
And I nearly drowned in the pond in my granny's garden.
It's a wonder I'm here at all.
The New Kid
If you moved a lot as a child you will find the familiarity of being The New Kid, well, familiar.
At a school I moved to when I was 9, the kids in my class all told me they thought I would be African as the teacher had told them I was coming from Very Far Away. This was England and we were moving from Germany.
I think everyone was quite disappointed I wasn't African. I think I was too.
The Telephone
The Phone in the Kitchen
At boarding school when the phone rang in the corridor at the bottom of the stairs, there would be great excitement. The ring would resonate up the stairwell, pinging off the metal railings filtering down the hallway into the dorm rooms. Those waiting for a call would rush to answer it first. Sometimes the call would be for you!
The phone was a pay phone but few of us had any money. Ten pence might get you a couple of minutes, enough time to tell your mum you were okay.
The best trick was to call your parents, shout "It's Tanya!" down the phone in the tiny space of time between them picking up the receiver and the pips beeping at you to put your money in. If everything went according to plan, your parent would hear your shout and know to call you back.
The most expensive way to make a call was to reverse the charges. This was For Emergencies.
Making a reverse charge call entailed calling the operator, explaining who you were calling, and giving them the number. The operator would then dial the number, and ask the receiver (in this case the parent) if they wanted to accept a reverse charge call.
Hopefully, your parent would say yes as they will have remembered who you are and the number that you’re calling from.
I'd forgotten all about the operator until just now. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Knowing the Number
Thurton 397. That was the phone number for our house back in the 1980s. Yup three whole numbers. The code for the Norfolk village of Thurton was maybe a 7 or an 8. I don't remember. For some reason whenever you answered the phone you always said the number back to the caller.
"Hello, this is Thurton 397."
These days, I eye my ringing phone with suspicion.
Moments of Contemplation
Patience
I used to be a patient person. At least, I like to think so. But the way Netflix or Disney or Prime drip feed you one episode at a time of your favourite show can feel like torture. There's a reason I'm told. Something about 'rolling availability' and 'streaming rights' things that the average telly watcher could care less about.
It does have a whiff of the olden days when terrestrial TV showed Prime Suspect or ER or Friends, one episode at a time. I get the argument. It builds anticipation and excitement for What Will Happen Next?
This is what happens in my family: we have a quick discussion, or longer, on what happened in the previous episode. Sometimes it entails a search on YouTube for a catchup video. After a good five minutes and further questioning, we’re all up to speed. All I can say is thank you, internet.
Looking Out of the Window
Do it. It's good for your eyes. Those teeny tiny muscles get to rest up from all that close-screen adaptation when you let them look out of the window. They can rest and wander.
You'll also get to see what's going on with your neighbour which, you never know, might be fascinating.
Wondering About the Weather
Wouldn't it be great if we all knew how to predict the weather? Holding up a finger into the breeze for wind direction or predicting rainfall simply by looking at the clouds? Maybe that's just me.
Every day without fail my youngest asks one or all of us what the weather's going to be today.
Now, you can peruse a ten-day forecast, and find out how much precipitation to expect at 2.45 pm or what the UV index is going to be exactly over your house.
Still, though I like to throw caution to the wind and set out on a dog walk without a rain jacket and enjoy the excitement of wondering if that looming thundercloud up ahead will burst right over me.
Tangible Things
Maps
There is a joy in looking out over a map, folding it out following the edge of a country, and trying to pronounce city names in an unfamiliar language. Some maps might unfold to the size of a large table while others only show you your road.
A map can show you where to go and how to get there. If you can unfold it all the way out, you have a physical sense of the distance you might have to travel, of quite how far it is from Vancouver to the Arctic Circle.
Bad Photos
Ahhhh, The Bad Photo. A subject close to my heart. Bad photos were common not so long ago. Only supermodels knew how to pose for a good picture and there was a professional photographer to get that picture right.
The rest of us had Instamatic film cameras with a very excitable flash. Bleached-out faces, blurry birthday cakes, cropped-out heads, wonky horizon lines. Those pictures are the stuff of pre-smartphone days. For some of us, those terrible portraits are the stuff of nightmares.
Yet I can't help but think these old photos seem more human. Mistakes are human. Nothing was perfect. Not your skin, not your hair, not your outfit. No one cared. Well, that's probably not true. If I'd had a smartphone when I was a teen, I'd have learnt to pose a selfie with the best of them.
Photo Albums
I'm looking for photo albums at the moment to house my archive of old (or should I say vintage) printed pictures currently stacked in a box I bought from Muji a few years ago. I want to give these photos a place to be, to honour the point in time when they were important. Of course, like the rest of the world, much of my picture-taking today is on my phone and I have 20 000 photos to prove it. What the hell am I going to do with 20 000 photos?
Your Brain is Plastic
Figuring Out Who That Actor is
How many times have you sat watching a film or a show discussing at length with whoever will listen, who that actor is? Is she the one from Friends? You know, the one with the long blonde hair? No? Really? Looks just like her. Can you look her up on your phone please, mine's still charging.
It's the not knowing that's so excruciating. But if you could just let it go, stop trying to think so hard, you'll be walking down the aisle in your local grocery store or standing in the shower or shoving a large load of washing into the machine and suddenly that name will pop right into your head. It's sort of magical. Your brain has it all filed away. It just needs time to relax to find it.
Memory
It's popular to imagine that our facility to remember is diminishing along with the increased sophistication of our devices. Honestly, I'm not sure my memory was all that great in the first place. Or maybe I just can't remember.
I did read something somewhere about how we make memories and store them for recollection. The reason why it's so important to pay attention, to be present and in the moment is that that is how our brains form memories. From you paying attention.
If you don't pay attention, then your brain can't make a memory. If you can't make a memory you have nothing to recall. This has nothing to do with the Internet but everything to do with being human.
