I have recently finished reading Hunters and Gatherers, a (quite good) novel written and set in 1991, which includes the following plot elements:
1) A door-to-door saleswoman pitches (hardcopy) encyclopedias to customers who eagerly seek easy access to vast quantities of information.
2) A man is eager to read an obscure novel he’s heard about, so he scours used book stores, hoping to find a copy. In the meantime, he’s not sure what the novel is about, and has no way to find out.
3) A comedian stores his collection of jokes on notecards, filling two rooms worth of file cabinets.
4) A collector of sound effects stores her collection on cassette tapes, and has no cost-effective way to create backups.
5) A man is unable to stay in close contact with his (adult) children, because long distance calling rates are prohibitively high.
The next time some Luddite tries to tell me that living standards haven’t improved in the past couple of decades, I think I’ll hand him a copy of this book.
Either that or I’ll sit him down to watch nearly any movie made in the twentieth century. Choose one at random and the chances are pretty good that a single cellphone could have resolved all the characters’ troubles in about a minute.
(Hat tip to the perspicacious Nathan Mehl for the movie/cellphone observation, and for his permission to steal it.)
My favorite illustration of this is a parody of the TV show ’24’ set in 1994. Jack finds the terrorists and then… has to run to a pay phone to call CTU!
I agree. I think this runs parallel to another complaint people often express. A phrase I still hear often is, “They don’t make ’em like they used to”, directed toward automobiles.
My response is always, “True, and thank God they don’t”. Today’s cars are far superior to those of just 20 years ago and are in a different automotive universe to those of 40 years ago.
Jeff: It was just about 40 years ago that I was riding with my father in his car when it stopped dead on the road and wouldn’t restart. After grumbling for a few minutes, he got philosophical and said, “Well….with 25,000 miles on it you’ve got to expect this kind of thing.”
The Woody Allen film Play It Again, Sam, really illustrates this, too. The high-powered-executive character is constantly calling his office whenever he gets near a phone to tell them what number he can be reached at.
I often think I would have either become a librarian or died a slow death from frustration — or both — if I hadn’t been born when I was. I totally can’t imagine doing business travel without the information I have access to through the internet.
Jeff: These videos of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu might be a fun addition to the next ‘old cars are so much better’ conversation:
NYTimes blog about it: http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/a-2009-chevy-malibu-destroys-a-1959-bel-air-literally/
More angles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xwYBBpHg1I
I’ve tried, but I just don’t get Nathan’s cellphone rule. Either
the odds are way lower than he says, or we’ve watched a very
different set of 20th centrury movies. Here are the 20th century
moveies I recall seeing, list limited to the A-B title range.
Absent Minded Professor; Adam’s Family Reunion; African Queen;
Airplane; Aliens; Apollo 13; Arsenic and Old Lace; Attack of the
Killer Tomatoes; Auntie Mame; Babe; Baby Boom; Back to the
Future; Barbarella; Bell, Book, and Candle; Belles of St
Trinians; Bells Are Ringing; Big; Big Chill; Black Hole; Blade
Runner; Blazing Saddles; Blue Murder at St Trinians; Blue Velvet;
Blues Brothers; Boris and Natasha; Breakfast at Tiffany’s;
Broadcast News; Bruce Almighty; Buckaroo Banzai, Buffy the
Vampire Slayer; Bull Durham; Bye Bye Brazil
For the odds to be “pretty good”, I’d look for many of these
(really, at least 50%) to be cellphone-solvable. I’m not sure
that even one qualifies.
I have to agree with Ron about the movies solved by cell phone issue, but there are certainly lots of problems in old TV shows and movies that could have been averted with one. I especially enjoy the scenes in “Lou Grant” where reporters fight to get to a pay phone in order to be first to call in their stories.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer definitely qualifies. I admit to being a huge Joss Whedon fan, but the whole time in that show I thought “huh, I wonder how many people have died over the last 6 years because Buffy doesn’t carry a freaking phone?”