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Публикация

BeijingPalmer

I can video call my parents on another continent for free thanks to a global communications network of unsurpassed scale.

Matthew Downhour

I like this brainstorm: greatest achievements since 1969. Number one for me: eradicating smallpox What else?

Обсуждение

21 прямых ответов · 77 сообщений

Показаны не все ответы

Публичный счётчик показывает 22, а источник передал 21. Остальные ответы могли быть удалены, скрыты или не выданы публично.

John Rowan

The extent to which this has reduced the emotional and practical difficulties of moving abroad is extraordinary. It's far easier for my parents to get hold of me abroad than it was for them to get hold of me when I was at university in the late 90s.

Steve Gordon

I regularly harness a veritable smorgasbord of advanced technology to talk with my friend in Thailand about his dog.

L
longuskikirk

Anti-smoking campaigns have probably saved more lives than anything else in world history.

NG

I remember my mum fretting about the cost of calling her dad in Belgium

petebailey85

Do you remember on british tv from the 90s when they used to make a huge fuss about doing a video interview across the Atlantic? And now it's just clicking on WhatsApp.

peterh32

Arguing with your housemates about the phone bill!

BeijingPalmer

when my dad was in Hong Kong aged 18 he had to wait several hours for a friend at the telephone exchange to snatch him a few minutes of call with his parents and that was *because he had an inside contact*

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
bbtaps

My family and I used to prearrange phone times with my uncles in Nepal so that they would hang around the village phone at the right times. That echo/delay conversation will not be missed.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Chris Doyon

In the mid-80's even calls within the US were wildly expensive. A friend gave me some calling card numbers obtained by phone modem war dialing and it was a revelation to talk with my high school friends (on dorm hall payphones) scattered at different college campuses across the country

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
You can call me Al.

Any factual question I can get an immediate answer to, it's astonishing. Who ran Senegal is 1973? Senegal was led by President Léopold Sédar Senghor and Prime Minister Abdou Diouf in 1973. Never heard of either, but that would have taken hours when I was smaller.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Lewis

I know someone who, while at uni in the 1980s, realised that the international restriction (I’m unsure on the mechanism, that’s just what it was described as) had been removed from their hall’s phone by accident. It took several -excruciatingly expensive- hours before the uni realised.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
dhpljm266

When my mother first had email (c. late ‘80s) she would write emails to colleagues in Taiwan (b/c calling them was obviously too expensive) and it took so long that with the time zone issues, each would read the email, respond, then the other would repeat the next local work day.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
calguy2024

When I was young old Hong Kong tv shows frequently depicted the sending of audio letters via cassette tapes. We never used that in our family. Instead we sent the occasional letter or make a long distance call. Now my mom makes video calls to her sister every Saturday evening.

BeijingPalmer

I like this one because we really take it for granted but it is in fact something that allows every day for people to see wives, parents, grandchildren, etc far away

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Nevin Thompson

In 94 I faxed my parents from Japan. And sent letters with special lightweight airmail paper.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Max Pol Un

Yeah, the Internet is great. One of the best inventions of all time. Too bad it also sucks.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Richard J

I read a novel a year or so ago by someone born in the mid 90s who had assumed early 90s calls between Japan and the U.K. were affordable for an impecunious student and yeah, no

Ответ для Richard J
BeijingPalmer

lol which novel

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Richard J

Mongrel by Hanako Footman which is perfectly fine (if clearly a show pitch turned into a novel) but it just leapt out at me as something just not gettable post voip days

Ответ для Richard J
Richard J

As first novels go it was pretty good, so I’m not criticising them for it, just an example of how quickly people forget

Ответ для Richard J
M
mjtmjt

My sister was a student in Japan in the late 1980s. She used to fax us weekly but in very tiny writing to make it one page. She called once a year of a “yes I’m fine” length except once when allowed an office line. It did fall in cost a lot though through1990s before voip, didn’t it?

Ответ для mjtmjt
accidentalflyer 🇨🇦🇹🇼🇺🇸🇺🇦

Thanks to ATM. (Not the banking one. Asynchronous Transfer Mode, which rolled out in the 1990s for digitizing voice communication.)

Ответ для Richard J
Josh Landau

Shit, early 90s calls between US *states* weren’t particularly affordable.

Ответ для Josh Landau
Josh Landau

I remember that when we talked to my grandma in NY from Michigan we always had a time limit because a ten minute call cost multiple dollars. (For the youths: inflation-adjusted, it’d be like 50c/min to talk long distance back then.)

Ответ для Josh Landau
cheyinka

My grandma (in PA) called us (in MT) after I think 9pm her time because long-distance rates were lower after a certain hour, and *she* called *us* because that way it went on *her* phone bill.

Ответ для Josh Landau
Richard J

Yeah, my parents were very insistent in the U.K. that even I, a sad sack, didn’t call my friends in the same town until after 6

Ответ для Richard J
John Rowan

I'd completely memory-holed that, and now look forward to explaining that one to my kids.

Ответ для John Rowan
Josh Landau

Mine (8) still doesn’t quite understand the concept of “you had to wait to watch what you wanted to watch and if it wasn’t on, too bad.”

Ответ для Josh Landau
Celestial M Weasel

And you would then probably never see it

Ответ для Celestial M Weasel
Jim Godowic

Unless the show hit 100 episodes, then it was syndicated and you got one episode a night on a local UHF TV station.

Ответ для Richard J
Celestial M Weasel

We had a lodger when I was little, a language assistant teaching French, from Tunisia for a year. She had letters from home but was annoyed that they were a bit lacking, when she got home she discovered her dad had died of a heart attack a month into the year and they had decided not to tell her

Ответ для Richard J
NotPrinceHamlet

Suddenly had a flashback to calling home in first year of uni on a BT chargecard and/or phonecard

Ответ для Josh Landau
John

Between communities even. If we wanted to call anyone outside our 500 person town it was long distance.

Ответ для Josh Landau
B
Books and Cheese

In the late nineties my college suite mate would call her boyfriend at night with phone cards because it was cheaper, and he was about three and a half hour away in the same state.

Ответ для Josh Landau
Banda Bassotti

Only learned a few years ago that most "local" calls in the US were often free with your phone plan. And that the Atlanta local calling area is fucking gigantic.

Ответ для Richard J
ragnarokette

I got chewed out by my parents for texting a friend in Mexico in like... 2008?

Ответ для Richard J
Snootacamund

Aldrich Ames, spy convicted in 1994, had monthly phone bills in the 1980s of over $5,000 then dollars mostly because his wife wanted to talk to her family in Colombia.

Ответ для Richard J
Barry Freed

Major driver of credit card fraud among college students back then. Ask me how I know (please don’t ask me how I know).

Ответ для Richard J
Fnord Borgly

"They Might Be Giants Dial-A-Song: Free when you call from work"

Ответ для Richard J
Phase Blowly

A 20 minute phone call from Buffalo, NY to my buddy in Helsinki in the mid 90s was, like, $60. Tried explaining long distance phone calls to a much younger friend and they said they would riot if they got charged per call. Haha.

Ответ для Richard J
Justincredible 🇱🇸☔️

I remember the 90s as, “the calling card era”. I lived in China for a few years and I traveled all over the US. Wherever I went I was always looking for the affordable calling cards that would allow me to talk to my family and my boo

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE

i wonder if people under 25 even understand the concept of calling long distance

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
Joi Ito's Jibo sez friendly plane wave ✈️👋

And also just the concept of you not having a phone, or the person you’re trying to reach not having a phone. Finding a pay phone, stopping by a friend’s house to use their phone, asking someone in a store, etc

Ответ для Joi Ito's Jibo sez friendly plane wave ✈️👋
Davis X. Machina

I have a handful of gettone, the special payphone tokens you used to use in Italy. For important long distance calls, a cubicle with a taxi meter at the back of the nearest good-sized post office. Traveling and not hearing from someone for a week at a time. Aerogrammes...

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
BB Chicken

Ha, the ending of Pink Floyd's "Young Lust" must flummox the youths.

Ответ для BB Chicken
NerdyKris

"What's my age again", confusing the hell out of them with things like "pay phone" and "not knowing what caller ID is". (on top of gay sex being illegal but that might make a comeback)

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
NO DISASSEMBLE.

Try explaining calling cards to them. You called a toll-free number to punch in two other numbers (account and phone) just to get cheaper long distance! (I used to work for MCI.)

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
Hollyphant Pants

And no-one alive understands how emigration was for people before the 20th century. If you emigrated, you would literally never see or hear your family again - letters that took months to arrive were the only way you'd know what happened to them.

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
Andy

Im 38 and I barely understand beyond it cost more

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
Next door in Silicon Valley

Or what area codes are Phone numbers didn't always require the full 10 numbers are

Ответ для Next door in Silicon Valley
Nolan Hahn

Area codes are where you keep your various hoes, everyone knows that

Ответ для Nolan Hahn
Next door in Silicon Valley

Thank you Professor Ludacris

Ответ для GOLIKEHELLMACHINE
accidentalflyer 🇨🇦🇹🇼🇺🇸🇺🇦

Or when the calls were connected that actually meant a physical, wired contact, with current traveling from one handset through long distance over to another handset, through cables and switches. Actual physical link.

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
Bill Grueskin

When I was living in Italy (late 70s/early 80s), you'd go to a post office, plunk down a wad of cash, get allotted X minutes, go into a booth, wait for the operator to connect the call, endure long pauses as your words crossed the ocean, then get cut off mid-conversation when your money ran out.

Ответ для Bill Grueskin
Tom

Kids these days will never understand how being told to quiet down because their parent was ON A LONG DISTANCE CALL… carried a massive, unspecified, and unspoken “or else.”

Ответ для Bill Grueskin
Bill Grueskin

Relatives who were changing planes in the city you lived in would call from the airport just to say hi, since it wasn't long distance bsky.app/profile/tomk...

Tom

Kids these days will never understand how being told to quiet down because their parent was ON A LONG DISTANCE CALL… carried a massive, unspecified, and unspoken “or else.”

Ответ для Bill Grueskin
Whirling Dervish

reminds me of the famous joke: <Person places collect call> <operator> Who should I say is calling? <Person> "Tell them this is "IArrivedFineAndAllsIsGood" <Operator> "Would you like to accept a collect call from "IArrivedFineAndAllsIsGood"? <Parents> No thanks!

Ответ для BeijingPalmer
dontcallmesurely

My youngest daughter was 2 YO when her older sister went to college. We would FT big sis every evening at bedtime, and there is no way in this world they would have the bond they do if that wasn’t an accessible possibility.

thebeardedone42

I remember the old version of the spaceship earth ride at disney world used to end at a look into the future by showing two kids in countries across the world, both of them learning from a teacher being translated to them on a t.v. in real time. We more or less have that now. Amazing.

Faqa

And they did it without building a single *shudders* data center. (Many people unironically believe this)

Jeremy Chao

One of the few Jetsons/Star Trek things we actually got.

Ответ для Jeremy Chao
Ostrich and 12.5k others

Remember how BTTF thought everyone would have 20 fax machines in the future?

Bobson Dugnutt

When I was 19 my girlfriend was Australian and I spent like 20% of my paycheck talking to her.

John

We had two phone lines growing up so we did not have to pay long distance prices when calling anyone 5 minutes outside of town.

neilpostman

Food preservation or a/c.

Ответ для neilpostman
neilpostman

Nearly every person in the US can get fresh fruits/veggies at any time of year if the have the willingness to spend the cash.

Ответ для neilpostman
neilpostman

Conversely people live and operate in otherwise impossible places like us deep south or the tropics now because a/c.

Ответ для neilpostman
Banda Bassotti

The US had reliable cold chains long before 1969 though. I remember reading a post pointing that out. The USSR could put a man in space, but couldn't get a pint (litre?) of ice cream from a factory to your house without it melting.

Doremus Schafer

bsky.app/profile/dore...

Doremus Schafer

Quote of the day: Arthur C. Clarke maintaining the honourable tradition of predicting the societal development of the future in the terms of the technology of the (1987) present-day. www.google.no/books/editio...

accidentalflyer 🇨🇦🇹🇼🇺🇸🇺🇦

Charles Kao used to live above my parents on CUHK campus. His work in fibre optics made this kind of communication possible (and him, Nobel winner.) Also perfect example how UK benefitted from students coming from British colonies to study and then stayed.

David Hull 胡大衛

Try to tell folks about long distance fees. Phone cards. Trunk lines.

Ответ для David Hull 胡大衛
Poocharé

Having my phone card number stolen at JFK and getting a call from MCI's fraud center a month later to ask if I'm making calls between Egypt and Israel

Aedan Roberts

My kids know their cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents on the other side of the world better than I did the ones who lived an hour or two away because we can communicate so quickly and easily. It's easy to forget how incredible that is.

Jordan

I remember taking a phone card with me to college because long distance calls even from one state to another was otherwise ruinously expensive.

Ответ для Jordan
Poocharé

Making a long distance call from a hotel without using your own phone card was a very expensive rookie mistake. They'd absolutely soak you on the bill.

thomascoyle

My wife of over 40 years goes back to Singapore every summer. Until the 21st century because of the cost of phone calls, we used to have to write weekly letters to keep each other informed of what we were doing. Now we FaceTime every day.