SHARE YOUR WORLD 1-30-2022

January ended with the biggest ever blizzard for the month of January. We have had bigger blizzards in other months, but this one was the winner for January. Not to worry because now they are predicting more snow next weekend. I hope we get some melting in between.

Life is speeding along. I wish it would slow down a bit. Just a bit.

Questions

What is one topic you love to talk about?

History and if that doesn’t work, how about ecology? Okay, then let’s talk about time travel and fantasy and novels. Or photography.

Just let’s not talk about our government or politics. Not unless I’m absolutely sure you agree with me 100%. I’m just not up for another pointless argument during which I am forbidden by the rules of civility which I practice (but you might not) to not tell you that I think you are a total moron. Since I can’t say what I think, I’d just as soon skip the experience.

Suppose there was a magical wizard standing right in front of you and you could turn your life into anything you wanted, what would you do? ‘  

I would have to tell him to resign because I need to be Chief Top Wizard In Charge of the World. I’m going to magic away pollution, regrow our forests, eliminate malls and maybe send humans back to dwelling in caves. That is more than merely pre wi-fi. It’s pre flush toilets. Humanity needs a reboot — and I’m just the gal to make it happen!

Could you adjust to life without any internet?

Notes: This means the net has failed. There is no cyber connection.  Things have gone back to pre-Wi-Fi. We’d have to use land-line telephones write letters by hand — and mail them.  Paper newspapers and magazines.  Paper books.  !! You do NOT have to go back to ledgers and paper because we invented calculators and electronic bookkeeping devices long before the internet. !! Also, you still have a calculator. They are also pre wi-fi. You have DVD and CDs and tapes. Records. Speakers. if you are rich, you can install a phone in your car. They had them back in the 1930s.

Well, first of all, I grew up in that pre-cyber world and there was much to recommend it. We didn’t have the net, but we talked on the phone and the mail actually got delivered in a day or two, not weeks. We also (gasp) went visiting and read books. Before we had the internet, you could buy Books On Tape and Recorded Books — and a couple of others — both on tape, and then on CD. Actually, that was easier to use in a car, too. We had tape recorders, voice records, television, radio, recordings on vinyl and CD and we bought movies and played them on our DVD players. We still have analog everything as well as digital everything else.

Living without the internet is more a matter of not being able to be as close to people who live in other countries or even in this one, but very far away. Email would be a loss, but if I never went near social media again, I’d be JUST find. I also wouldn’t mind going back to newspapers that actually carried the news, not just headlines.

I still buy my OWN media — recordings and movies. We have an unstable internet connection and I don’t want to be entirely dependent on WiFi. We even have a couple of turntables! DVD players AND movies. And far, far too many books.

I think of all the things I’d miss, it would be email. I think for Garry it would be access to all the movies ever made that still exist (many more were made but have disappeared). But we’d manage because that’s the world we grew up in and there were many aspects of it that were better. People were better. They didn’t spent their lives on their phone or on a computer. We talked to each other. Conversations were important and no one was silly enough to think “social media” held the “real” answers to LIFE.

As for land line phones, I wish! They were so much more dependable than anything we have invented since. And not all fidgety. They always worked, even if the power was out. And we could hear each other. By the way, they were using telephones in cars back in the 1930s. Not everything was invented since computerization. We actually had a lot of stuff BEFORE that. Enough to get us to the moon — 1969 — NO INTERNET!

I finally need to point out that computers existed long before the Internet came of age in the early 1990s. Computerization was an issue in the 1940s. That IS how we got to the moon. No internet, no connectivity, but absolutely computers. Relatively primitive compare to what we have now, but it blasted us out of this world and onto another.

If we could get to the moon without WiFi, I think we can manage to run the rest of our lives too. We might need to hire more people. Sounds good to me.

What do you think is unique about the human ‘animal’ (homo sapiens)?

Our determination to do the absolutely wrong thing. As a species, we have an issue with reality. We want what we want. If reality won’t give it do us, then we invent a god or a gadget or we turn a gadget into a god.

The one thing we don’t do is the right thing because it IS the right thing. We never had a great grip on the whole “right-wrong, good-bad” concept, but recently we’ve gone from bad to hopeless.

We don’t need to be perfect, but surely we can do better than whatever it is we are currently doing.

Categories: #SYW, #Writing, Anecdote, Computers, History, Literature, Share My World, Technology, Wi-Fi

Tags: #SYW, computers, connectivity, Marilyn Armstrong, Share Your World, technology, WiFi