Q&A: what do you miss the most from the time when there weren't computers and cell phones?

just thinking how much lifes have changed since the PC and the cell phones were invented. So, is there anything – and if yes – what? – that you miss from the ancient excellent times when you needed the actual yellow pages to find a contractor (or just word-of-mouth)?

Answer by Marlbobama
Sadly, today’s youth have no social skills for communicating face to face. I saw a kid wanting to know if he may maybe text back and forth with the interviewer for a job interview. He didn’t have the skills for a fixed interview

Answer by Stacie
I don’t like feeling like I have to have my cell phone emotionally involved to my hip or something. When I forget it at home or just don’t feel like having it on me all hours of the day, friends and family act like I’m so terrible. And its never over anything that they couldn’t wait to tell me later.
When I was a kid we had record games, but we still spent a lot of time outdoors before a live audience and we had huge imaginations, and it seems a lot of kids now are seriously bored if they can’t have electronics in some form or another entertaining them for hours a day. Public are getting too sedentary. So I guess I miss the days where public had to use their imagination and were more active.

Answer by Justin
three is company, ronald regan, michael jackson, and dallas. not really I don’t miss any of persons things, well maybe the ancient michael jackson like before he was a white woman. (I am ancient enough to remember persons things)

Answer by Mary C
WOW! What a fantastic question!

I am 62, so I remember the days before cell phones and computers.

I really miss getting a ‘live person’ when you have a conundrum with your phone service or your checking account. (Really, I have been trying for the past 5 days to get some sort of ‘printout’ to verify that I paid my hospital bill copay with an HSA card. I keep running into phone trees and websites that do not allow me to do this! No live public!)

Computers are really fantastic tools. Email is just wonderful for staying in touch with folks that you would (in my time) only talked to once or twice each year. But the downside is identity theft and virusus (viri?) that will kill your computer!

Cell phones are fantastic if you have an emergency. I find that I often tell tales about events in the past and add the disclaimer…”…and this was BEFORE cell phones.” But the downside is that you are ‘on call’ 24/7. Do we really need to be ‘in touch’ with folks all the time? And some of persons overheard conversations are so inane! “Yep. I’m here at the grocery store. I’m in the meat department. No, I don’t want chicken. The ground beef looks excellent. Yuk! I despise chicken livers and they are on special. No, she don’t eat meat no more. Yep. Become a vegetarian. I wonder how long that will last…” Do we really need to overhear stuff like that!?!

I reckon we were lots better off as a nation when our phones were black and there was just one per household. And computers were the stuff of science fiction.

Answer by ben dover
The business I miss the most is seeing a movie without having a phone life turned on. There is nothing that pisses me off more then when you are in a dark theater, and someones light from there phone goes on. I now buy M&M’s every time I go see a movie. I don’t buy them to eat them. I buy them to throw them at public that use there phone. I don’t care if I hurt them. They are Fing up my movie.

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Apology accepted (178/365)


Image by Wondermonkey2k
There are many things that I regret in life: Not going to see The State‘s reunion show; not agreeing to murder George Lucas before he had a chance to screw up Star Wars; thinking that sweatpants minus underwear was a excellent thought in Junior High. Nothing I regret more though than framing Douglas Bubble-Trousers for murder, or, as it turns out, just putting the poor bastard under a bucket and making him reckon about what he’d done.

When he and I first met we made a pact that we’d never fight. I, in my Bartles & Jaymes drunken rage, forgot about this pact. Last night I called him on his cell phone and left a message, hoping that his Visual Voicemail notification would place a smile on his tiny dirt-covered face and make his Lima Bean sized brain invent wild scenarios of us reuniting. As luck would have it, my apology worked as he showed up this afternoon with a bottle starter and a tiny tear in his eye.

He and I agreed though that this would be his last appearance for a while. I feel that fame may have gone to his head.

May 27, 2009

i know that cell phones were made or invented in 1973 by a man named cooper.
But when did the craze of having a cell phone start? was it in the 1990s

Answer by Cesar Cesar’
Yeah it was around 1990s

Answer by antonio andolini
There were cells in the late mid 80′s,…but they were huge & expensive,…& huge!!
(really, they were called mobile phones) (watch Michael Douglas in Wall Street 1987)

Then in the early 90′s the business to have was a pager,…then a sky pager,…then by the late mid 90′s you started seeing cell phones not many & then by the turn of the millenium,..you saw more,..& then more,….

I used to work at this restaurant which was “the place to be” in 2002 & these kids would come in and they’d all take their cell phones out & place them on the table. & this was a reputation symbol cuz (basically)they were all competing w/ one another to see who had the coolest phone with the most lights & everything & I’d get upset cuz there was no where to place the food.

Answer by Parmisan
Yes, in the 1990′s. But, in the first half it was still a very expensive tool to have, so it was mainly the privilege of businesses (meaning persons who by duty of work had to be out all the time, were agreed a cell phone from work). In the later 1990′s it became more well loved among private owners (I’m not talking about the extra rich, who may maybe also afford it in the earlier period). I even remember that in 2000 one of our professors (at a university in US) was still using a pager. Only one of the many students I knew had a cell phone and she would not respond all calls, as it was very expensive (she mainly used it to take voice messages and recall the person later). The real craze started in and after 2000.

Answer by tanya
I had my first cell phone in 1992. It was like a small brick. The plot was not cheap but I payed for it as I was in college. For the first yr or so I had it, no one else I knew had one. Everyone still had pagers and used pay phones. The phone would also get hot it you held it on one ear to long!

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