Updated 2 years ago
Come here, pull up a metaphorical stool, and let’s talk about the good old days.
I used to think my great grandfather, who had lived to see both airplanes being invented AND men on the moon, had seen it all. Let me tell you, I no longer think that. We had no idea what was in store for us.
My great-grandfather was just in a particular phase of development. We used to think the future was Out There, outer space, big iron tech. We used to think the aliens would fly here in these cute little tin cans. We were exactly wrong. As I will show you, the future was micro.
Back in my day we used email, and before that, we wrote letters in cursive on paper and put stamps on them and sent them in the mail and waited weeks to get a reply.
You would go to parties and no one had phones and you could act like an ass and not worry about anyone seeing it the next day. If you did something really stupid, you weren’t branded for life.
Though mail-order catalogues like Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Ward once ruled the day, eventually, you bought everything at stores. There were all sorts of stores in town. You would drive to them and usually pay in cash, or check! The owners of the stores had families with whom you went to school and church. You often had store credit if you had a good reputation, which was determined by combining the good name of your family with any anecdotes about you.
Everyone watched TV and you had a grand total of 3 channels to choose from, or maybe PBS if they were presumptuous, or a child. These channels were pretty much the same, and you could largely depend on them being even-handed. No one cared that much about politics.
Computers were something you carried around and weren’t microscopic and ubiquitous, and no one had brain implants.
There wasn’t an app to decide what your children would look like and what genes they would carry. You kind of left that all to chance.
Now it’s all Inner Space. And the aliens were always here! And they were us all along!
But back then, it wasn’t so bad. You could actually see people around you and interact with them, you weren’t about catching a virus, and your physical body wasn’t locked up in some tank for hundreds of years.
If you can read this now, through the quantum slipstream, just know that everything is going to be okay. Don’t worry about living too long. Extending life unnaturally and living as a ghost is no substitute. Savor what you have, and be thankful.
God, I miss pizza.
