technology How did people live without screens?

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,673]

Life these days is hard to imagine without them. The most prominent media of the time were books, paper and the radio which is how they got their news and music. How did these people not die from boredom? Are there some pros and cons when comparing the present? It'll be important to note the different contexts to which they apply.

 

Well TV nowadays seems to be little other than a waste of ones and zeroes. For one, it's littered with advertisements that get to you by attacking your self-esteem before offering to medicate that void with whatever they're selling to get you to go buy stuff. Hello consumerist culture. Oh right, there's also the deplorable mainstream news and entertainment media on TV. Well, its been a long time since I turned on a TV set for non-gaming purposes. I used to watch TV a lot back in the day. Now that I don't, all that time has gone to gaming or the internet. Because I don't take games with me to college, it's pretty much just internet. That realization of how I've been jumping from one screen to the next makes me wonder how on Earth did people live without screens? How did they not die from boredom?

 

Well, I'll try and answer my that last question I posed. There's a funny thing about the phrase "feeling bored". "Bored" is often used as an adjective to say that you're in a state of boredom. However, "bored" is also the simple past tense of "to bore" which means to create a hole in something. So then when someone says "I'm bored", that person is also saying that there's been a hole created in oneself, possibly indicating that someone is feeling hollow, void or empty. Think about that for a moment...

Then when we feel the boredom, the emptiness, it's often there that we become desperate for a "quick fix", something that can at least temporarily distract us or numb us from that feeling of boredom and emptiness. Does this sound right to you?

 

The following is pretty much guesswork. People interacted with each other more in the day, there was more closeness within the family. We used to visit our grandparents ever weekend up until they passed away and we would sometimes see aunts, uncles and cousins too. This may have been done much more often back in the day which partly made the family closer. What's more, it was also a time where the father was the only source of income for the household where mothers stayed at home to take care of the children and do housework. The children would play with each other using whatever happened to be around them along with their imagination. They sorta played with their surrounding environment and ended up learning some skills in that manner. Adults on the other hand would socialize with one another more, playing cards, dominoes or talk about recent events. I believe it's that socializing that kept people from going insane without any of the screens we've grown so dependent on, let alone accustomed to.

 

Within the broad context, internet has to be one of the best things to ever happen to our species. In a different context, it exacerbates an already-existing problem of the family unit having been isolated as well as the creation of an environment that isn't conducive to family attachments as well as access to information without any consideration for readiness or even relevance.

 

Well, this is where I've been getting some of this from. Consider it optional.

 

Your thoughts?

[Harmonic Revelations 8,835]

It's the fact that since screens did not exist, they did not know what was missing. Kids used to go outside more and I'm pretty sure all adults had to be perpetually drunk (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).

[Betez 1,734]

People had no knowledge such a thing existed, and therefore couldn't picture life without it. It's like the smartphone. Looking back, I don't know how the fuck I used to live without my iPod touch (now my iPhone). But I before they were made, I didn't know it would ever exist. But I did just fine. It's the same thing with screens.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Betez

[Argumedies 1,748]

They read books, they played outside getting real exercise, they went fishing and spent time with one another. They played actual board and card games they visited with family, they made friends, they walked and they talked, ride bikes and actually lived lives... and all without that little screen

[mycarhasaMoustache 449]

When I was a kid we had 1 tv in our house no pc no games consoles no mobile phones the tv had 4 channels and no remote. That is just the way things were I used to play outside with my friends, Build cool stuff with Lego, Play board games and read books there was plenty to do in the days before cheap mass internet and since the only internet and computers that were available back then were not designed for entertainment nobody had the internet so it didnt matter I fondly remember my awesome childhood. Oh how the world has changed.

[Argumedies 1,748]

I built this absolutely huge tree house. Its one of the many things that I can relate to the CMC with.

 

But we lived way out in the sticks as they used to say

 

Back when TV was just air waves we had to have an antenna that stood about 20ft shy of needing an airplane light on it just to get about 5-6 channels

[Princess Periwinkle 3,775]

I think people used to go outside or something.
 

I built this absolutely huge tree house. Its one of the many things that I can relate to the CMC with.

 
I made a treehouse too. It was rather small though. The plan was to eventually make a zip line out of it, but then a tree fell on it and broke it clean in half.

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,673]

I might be willing to give that lifestyle a try for a limited time. Just not under the current conditions. The internet feels like a safe haven from putting up with the buffoons I'm surrounded by. Just another two years before graduation...

 

This is going to sound ridiculous coming from an atheist, electrical engineering student and aspiring power engineer but I sometimes think about trying to live with the Amish if I could. For one it would help to answer the question this entire topic poses as well as to remove myself from the environment I've become so entrenched and dependent on in order to better put it under scrutiny. 

 

As good as technology is, it feels as though we're forgetting something in our progression. Food, water and shelter are available like never before with many luxuries inconceivable to the common man just 50 years ago yet depression seems to be running more and more rampant. Happiness--true happiness; not those false promises you see in advertising--these days sounds like a privileged few people get and keep. Technology should be giving us more hope for the future due to new possibilities yet I'm seeing the opposite. Something's out of our line of sight.

 

I just might have an idea of what it is but it isn't something I have a firm grasp on; attachments. How we relate to one another, how we interact with one another...  I realize now just how utterly void that last sentence was... We have a pretty good idea what the body needs to stay in shape, the list of which goes from nutrition to exercise... But what do we know about what makes the mind healthy? What do we know about what makes whole communities healthy? I'm pretty sure those are subjects to be found in psychology and sociology but those fields, especially the latter, seem obscured... Well, psychology has found quite a nice niche in the advertising industry but you rarely ever hear anything about sociology. Can anyone just off the bat say with confidence what it is even about? What do sociologists do and what fields puts the science into practice? It really doesn't seem to have a place in our paradigm is what I'm saying and that might be something to sit still on... What other sciences or field of sciences are out there but are just about completely ignored from the collective culture?

[Guest]

Well what you have to realize is that any generation past present or future will always look to the generation before them and wonder how they got by without their modern convienences. Now that we have smartphones people who use them everyday can never imagine only using a basic cell phone, and of course cell phone users before smartphones came out couldn't imagine being tethered to one location.

 

The reason our previous generations didn't die of boredom was because they always had some other kind of equivalent enough to keep their attention. You said it yourself, instead of watching TV or using the internet they would read books, or go to plays, and stuff like that.

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,673]

Well what you have to realize is that any generation past present or future will always look to the generation before them and wonder how they got by without their modern convienences. Now that we have smartphones people who use them everyday can never imagine only using a basic cell phone, and of course cell phone users before smartphones came out couldn't imagine being tethered to one location.

 

The reason our previous generations didn't die of boredom was because they always had some other kind of equivalent enough to keep their attention. You said it yourself, instead of watching TV or using the internet they would read books, or go to plays, and stuff like that.

Well... When it comes to cell phones, I'm quite old school. I'm having a hard time imagining why people would pay so much money for a laptop in their pocket. Doesn't really make sense to me. The cellphone I have is a Nokia 1616. Even then I rarely use it for anything other than calls. Not to mention that I have it bad enough with distractions and instant gratification so I really don't need more @__@

 

Well... There's just one nagging question to all of that. Was it in any way better than now? It could be or at least that's what I'm suspecting. For one, it an mess with brain development of children in various ways since parents are supposed to be a buffer to society. The reason why "adult content" is adult content is because such things are only to be shown to a person once that person has developed the readiness to understand it and its implications. Kinda like why dessert comes after the main course. Taking dessert before its time can ruin the appetite and you don't get to take in the good stuff first. 

 

Bits and pieces I have lying around but having a hard time connecting them together...

[Evilshy 5,090]

Well, before I had games and practically unlimited computer access, I read a lot more. When I was a kid, I played outside and built stuff with LEGOS (which I still do, at least when I'm at home and not college). My friends and I would build things and make wooden weapons and wood/chicken wire/duct tape shields and armor and fight each other. Or make little cities in the dirt areas of our yards out of rocks, sand and sticks.

Or build elaborate canal, dam, and drainage systems around our parents gardens. Seriously, we'd plan the whole thing out, build the structure out of sticks and twine, and then cover them with mud made of different mixtures of soils for maximum strength and erosion resistance. We had some serious engineering shit going on.

I had my first subscription to Popular Science when I was 10

 

My parents were pretty anti-video-games (they still are, but less so, since they saw that I could be a gamer and still have my shit generally together) but they didn't stop me from buying my own systems and games (though they did regulate how long I could use them) until, obviously, they figured I was old enough to handle things myself. And now that I think about it, they didn't much like me watching much TV, either :/

 

Maybe my friends and I were thinking too far ahead, but long before smart phones were a thing, we wanted the Internet in our pockets. Probably because we all loved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and now, years later, we have smart phones and Wikipedia, which is the closest we're ever likely to get.

 

I've had to go weeks at a time without it, and it is not fun. The lack of music sucks, but I can deal with it. The lack of near-instant access to information on pretty much anything is what I really hate

Edited May 31, 2013 by Evilshy

[MadDoggyca 710]

People had no knowledge such a thing existed, and therefore couldn't picture life without it. It's like the smartphone. Looking back, I don't know how the fuck I used to live without my iPod touch (now my iPhone). But I before they were made, I didn't know it would ever exist. But I did just fine. It's the same thing with screens.

 

 

I currently do not live with a cell phone and I have no intention in owning one ether... as for the screen thing  last year I discontented my self and did house sitting for a guy that live out in the middle of no-where. Not only did he not have a screen I lived 21 days with out, TV, Computer, internet. Phone (lan/cell).

 

I had 4 dogs and 3 horses I had to look after. and a quad with all the gas I could burn... It was the best 21 days of my life.. No one asked me one stupid question about Technology... it was a god send.

 

I also went to South Amarica to Ecuador for 14 days with out technology, Hot water for showers, and being surrounded by people that didn't speak English. For 14 days I didn;t have a single clue what any pony said.. that was epic as well..

[~Starlight~ 764]

NO FORUMS RUN TO THE HILLS!!!

 

I am joking! Of course we could live without screens, but there may be problems, medical and scientific things will no longer exist so dieses will be more fatal and it will take longer to treat. A few things we really could not live without now is....

 

• X-ray
• FORUMS
• Scanners

And there are probably more but I don't know the names. We could live without them but not to the supreme race we are now!

[Wubsie 1,123]

There's something called going outside, having fun....and being active..

Technology isn't something people need. People back then probably did other things.