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> Getting lost on the city due to a wrong turn or similar and having to figure it out by yourself. You could ask at some gas station, with varied results We ha

by klyrs 4y ago

> Getting lost on the city due to a wrong turn or similar and having to figure it out by yourself. You could ask at some gas station, with varied results We had this miraculous invention called a "map." Local ones were usually free. I did a lot of cross-country driving and got turned around once before making the habit of picking up a map on arrival to a new place. After I started that habit, I was never lost. > Very poor public transport info Similar to maps, when I was using transit, cities provided paper copies of bus and train schedules. Help lines were staffed by actual humans who would help with complex route-finding. Librarians were great for that too. > No food delivery services, you could order pizza and that was it Not true! I had vietnamese, chinese and thai favorites that all delivered in the late 90s. And that's not even a thing. Even today, you can still use a desktop for food delivery, no phone required. > No convenient messaging of other people independent from wires. You had pay phones and that's it. And maybe you could leave a message Yeah, we had this thing called "peace and quiet." It was amazing. People got bored, and found creative outlets. And yeah, get-togethers required more planning, but we didn't have this "social freeze" bullshit where nobody commits to anything.

raverbashing 4y ago
Thanks, of course I used maps and paper copies of public transport info Now try using a map while driving. And remembering the turns you need to take to get to a place you know or want to go. Oh but your map is slightly out of date and now that way goes a different way (this can happen with GPS as well, sure, but you can then drive in the general direction you want and have it pick up at a later position once away from the change)
- klyrs 4y ago
  > Now try using a map while driving. I did that. All the time. It was fine. I never experienced a map so out of date that I couldn't get to my destination. Sometimes I'd need to find an alternate route. A minor inconvenience. A common strategy for route planning was to exerpt the route onto another sheet of paper. Draw just the streets you'll need, and their names, and maybe the names of some of the cross streets leading up to a turn. I kept a little notebook in my car for these "mini-maps" which made for really easy at-a-glance route finding. I find automated route-planners to be quite annoying because they're making micro-optimizations that might shave seconds off a route at the cost of another dozen turns. By picking simple, straightforward routes, I quickly learned the layouts of cities to the point that I didn't even need my notebook. I self-navigate to this day, but the maps are built into my car, which is a bit more convenient than handling paper. Not a life-changer though. Smartphones are enabling laziness and stupidity. You can do without. It just takes thinking, planning, and effort.
sagarm 4y ago
> We had this miraculous invention called a "map." Local ones were usually free These maps had only road information, no POI data or road closure information. No public transit info either. Having Google Maps and Uber/Lyft on the go basically entirely removes the need to plan where you'll go and how you'll get there or return. I had the original iPhone on an internship in 2008 and being able to explore a new city without worrying about getting lost was liberating. > Yeah, we had this thing called "peace and quiet." It was amazing Sitcoms in the 90s had entire episodes that depended on people not being able to reach each other. In the era of ubiquitous cell connectivity, this just isn't a problem anymore. This is another example where the need to plan in advance is basically gone, you can figure things out as you go. Just recently meeting up with friends we had a miscommunication and one of us ended up in the wrong place. With cell phones, we all knew exactly what was happening and could fix it easily. Without? A giant mess. That said my phone is almost always on vibrate, so if I'm not actively looking at it I'm generally not going to notice a message immediately. And nobody actually calls anymore.

by klyrs 4y ago

raverbashing 4y ago

Thanks, of course I used maps and paper copies of public transport info Now try using a map while driving. And remembering the turns you need to take to get to a place you know or want to go. Oh but your map is slightly out of date and now that way goes a different way (this can happen with GPS as well, sure, but you can then drive in the general direction you want and have it pick up at a later position once away from the change)

klyrs 4y ago
> Now try using a map while driving. I did that. All the time. It was fine. I never experienced a map so out of date that I couldn't get to my destination. Sometimes I'd need to find an alternate route. A minor inconvenience. A common strategy for route planning was to exerpt the route onto another sheet of paper. Draw just the streets you'll need, and their names, and maybe the names of some of the cross streets leading up to a turn. I kept a little notebook in my car for these "mini-maps" which made for really easy at-a-glance route finding. I find automated route-planners to be quite annoying because they're making micro-optimizations that might shave seconds off a route at the cost of another dozen turns. By picking simple, straightforward routes, I quickly learned the layouts of cities to the point that I didn't even need my notebook. I self-navigate to this day, but the maps are built into my car, which is a bit more convenient than handling paper. Not a life-changer though. Smartphones are enabling laziness and stupidity. You can do without. It just takes thinking, planning, and effort.

sagarm 4y ago

> We had this miraculous invention called a "map." Local ones were usually free These maps had only road information, no POI data or road closure information. No public transit info either. Having Google Maps and Uber/Lyft on the go basically entirely removes the need to plan where you'll go and how you'll get there or return. I had the original iPhone on an internship in 2008 and being able to explore a new city without worrying about getting lost was liberating. > Yeah, we had this thing called "peace and quiet." It was amazing Sitcoms in the 90s had entire episodes that depended on people not being able to reach each other. In the era of ubiquitous cell connectivity, this just isn't a problem anymore. This is another example where the need to plan in advance is basically gone, you can figure things out as you go. Just recently meeting up with friends we had a miscommunication and one of us ended up in the wrong place. With cell phones, we all knew exactly what was happening and could fix it easily. Without? A giant mess. That said my phone is almost always on vibrate, so if I'm not actively looking at it I'm generally not going to notice a message immediately. And nobody actually calls anymore.