Revolutionary changes we all take for granted

[SomeRandom]

I grew up in the VHS/DVD “generation.”
So I took it for granted, even before streaming services, that you could watch whatever TV show or movie you wanted whenever you wanted. But that wasn’t always the case. How many folks in the 1930s rewatched an old film simply for nostalgia, after all?

The advent of TV is often cited by film historians as breathing new life into old lost (often forgotten) films.
Indeed I don’t know a reality that is without TV. It’s always something that’s just…existed for me.

I also mostly grew up on the internet.
So I take all my apps and instant connectivity for granted. Like it’s just a part of “normal life.”

What about you? What’s something revolutionary that you take for granted?

 

[Sedim Haba]

GPS

Grew up with paper maps and a compass. So different now to travel.

 

[Aupmanyav]

What about you? What’s something revolutionary that you take for granted?

I now take every thing for granted. We had only radios, no phones, no heaters, no air conditioners, no washing machines, in some locations where my father was posted - no electricity, no computers (all registers had to be filled by pen and ink - and the more important ones with black Indian ink), not even ball-point pens, and we traveled in trains drawn by steam engines. It was hilarious when they would let out the steam, interesting when they threw coal in the furnace, the guard and the engine whistled and waved red or green flags, exchanged flags at stations without stopping, and brought the engine under a pipe to replenish water in the machine, guessed how far the train is by listening to the sound on the rail track and put coins there to be flattened out. That was another age.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Electric lighting

 

[RestlessSoul]

We had no central hearing or double glazed windows when I was a kid. One coal fire in the living room, no heating in the bedrooms. Sometimes on winter mornings there was a layer of frost on the inside of the windows. I remember my mum on her hands and knees at the grate trying to light a coal fire. I also remember, fondly, Sunday afternoons staring at the glowing coals and daydreaming about journeying to the centre of the earth.

 

[Rival]

The ability to easily start a fire.

Before matches were tinderboxes and they were not easy to use.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The ability to easily start a fire.

Before matches were tinderboxes and they were not easy to use.

The one on my old Zippo lighter was pretty efficient. Petrol instead of tinder though.

 

[Viker]

I remember when cable was new and the war between VHS vs BETA. BETA was superior quality but long movies could be on two tapes. BETA lost the war. I remember the advent of personal computers in the 80s but they seemed to be a passing fancy to us. Atari was the center of the universe. Remember party lines, anyone? This is how we had the "stranger in the house" calling trope back in movies in the 70s and early 80s.

I thought that when the html universe opened 30 years ago it would make the world a better place.

We used to laugh at people with cell phones in the 80s and 90s. You needed a back pack/brief case to carry all that crap and a huge bank account to afford it.

 

[Stevicus]

I grew up in the VHS/DVD “generation.”
So I took it for granted, even before streaming services, that you could watch whatever TV show or movie you wanted whenever you wanted. But that wasn’t always the case. How many folks in the 1930s rewatched an old film simply for nostalgia, after all?

The advent of TV is often cited by film historians as breathing new life into old lost (often forgotten) films.
Indeed I don’t know a reality that is without TV. It’s always something that’s just…existed for me.

I also mostly grew up on the internet.
So I take all my apps and instant connectivity for granted. Like it’s just a part of “normal life.”

What about you? What’s something revolutionary that you take for granted?

We always had TV, too, although not all of them were color TVs. A lot of people still had black-and-white sets. And most families only had one of them, so there were sometimes disputes over what TV show people wanted to watch. My brother and I made an agreement of alternating days of who would get to decide what to watch. (By the time he had kids, they each had their own TV in their room, so they didn't have such arguments.)

The advent of "video tape recorders" also solved the problem, as one could record one show while watching another. When my brother and I talked about that possibility, we saw it not only as revolutionary, but something short of miraculous.

 

[HonestJoe]

What about you? What’s something revolutionary that you take for granted?

Ferris Wheels.





And puns.

 

[Revoltingest]

Improved electronic limerick technology tools,
eg, rhyming dictionary, thesaurus
Death to such paper books!

 

[Aupmanyav]

.. and we traveled in trains drawn by steam engines.

You see, the cities were small, nothing called suburb. Railways stations were always near. Now those cities have hundreds of thousand people.

 

[FredVB]

I have what I say is a fuller perspective. As innovations come that change our lives, we miss that there is a decline, and even from what there is to know in prophecy, things are going to be lost, even of what we have come to take for granted. We will adjust to what we think is harder that was the way of life in previous generations.

 

[Alien826]

The general reliability of technology. How many times do we see a car broken down (mechanical failure, not accident) at the side of the road? Just one example.

Computers. When I started as a programmer, a computer filled a room and had a special environment. I interacted with it via punched cards. Now I don't think many people realize how many devices contain computer chips, all with many times the computational power of the monstrosity I worked with. And what we can do with them! Libraries full of information at my finger tips. Video games that are so close to reality ...

Soft toilet paper.

Dish washers.

Modern dentistry.

 

[FredVB]

We would lose things we have come to have pretty quickly to, none of those are forever. Our civilization coming to its collapse I suspect now strongly isn't so very far off. I see the prophecies for this too. So it is more important and urgent even for any people, including us, to break free and leave places of civilization where we can have our little communities without destruction to the world around us, with food, water, shelter, and desirable pleasure, joy, and love, that we would work for. Godliness calls for the responsible living we are supposed to have in this world, not continuing to be destructive toward it.