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What was daily life like before almost everyone had cell phones? “You left the house and you were gone.”
“If you got separated from a friend at an event, you might simply never hear from them again until you were both home and called each other. At home, most phones weren’t even cordless. You had to stand within 6 feet of the wall. A popular item was super long phone cords. (…)”
— Scott Swigart
“When I was a much younger man, I spent five months backpacking around east Africa. (…) They had no idea I was coming back, and I can still remember the look on my stepdad’s face when he opened the door shortly after dawn to see me standing there, probably the worse for wear, but the better for the experiences I had had. I remember him yelling up the stairs “He’s home!!” and my Mom charging down in her bathrobe to greet me and hear about my adventures. (…) No kid today is ever going to have that experience.” — Anon User
“Actually, it was utopia. You could actually walk out the door and not be bothered by your boss, your spouse, your attorney, your kids, your parents, your siblings, your bill collectors…”
— Anthony Kevin Johnson
“If you had arranged to meet someone somewhere, you had to be punctual, because if you were delayed in transit, then unless your meeting place had a phone whose number you knew, and you could also find a phonebox, you had no way of letting the other party know you were ‘running late’. (It is interesting to see how this phrase has increased in usage since the introduction of mobile phones, and how punctuality, which used to be a matter of common courtesy, has fallen out of fashion, as people have become more relaxed, and some would say lackadaisical, about their social arrangements and time-discipline. (…)
And impromptu organization was completely out of the question. Pre-internet, if you hadn’t talked to someone in person or called them at home the previous evening, then there was little to no chance of somehow pulling them together to do something. Things had to be continually planned days in advance.”
— Steve Denton
— What was daily life like before almost everyone had cell phones?, Quora, 2012. Photo source
