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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Old Rituals, Undone by Information Age


  • Letters and mail-call started disappearing more than 10 years ago, with the widespread adoption of email.
  • The family phone--its competition for the line, knowing who your kids are talking to--started disappearing 7-10 years ago, as it began increasingly common to get cell phones for increasingly young children.
  • In my case, at least, the venerable bedside alarm clock--with its need to be set every evening--has been replaced by the multi-alarm flexibility of the phone.

I wonder how long until we don't need to carry a wallet?

2 comments:

  1. Do you miss the sound of the dail-up modem? Can an electric car sneak up on you? How will you know your computer is working if you have SSD installed? At least now I know to take a little break, refocus my eyes, whenever I hear the disk drive fire up.

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  2. Funny! I do remember developing a certain Pavlovian response of being comforted when the dial-up modem squawk got to a certain point that indicated the line was open and a successful connection was going to be made! Electric car also--I actually blogged about that years ago (prior blog, tried but can't find the post)--had that odd sensation of an early Prius sneaking up on me in the parking lot. No personal experience of the SSD, though--would love to try!

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