Yep...and the great novels that were hand written or on a type writer... and the great radio broadcasts that we sat around listened to rather than watching a 60" high definition screen...and those lines of phones at airports we all queued up for instead of calling on your cell phone...and salary we received via a paper check every week where we stood in queue at the bank to deposit rather than having electronic deposits...the list goes on.
Some see new technology a progress...others just can't let go of the past. Just put another log into the stove, turn on the tube radio and huddle around another broadcast for the evening...
Still do it, but differently: huddled in front of a monitor, not as pleasantly warmed as I used to be by fire, and indignant that the electricity company manages to send me extortionate bills every winter, but not the actual
power required to get the value out of the heating equipment I own! Funny that - just like broadband, where they tell me that I have contracted for up to a zillion whatevers, when I only average about 3.4 on the scale any time I dial in Speedtest.
Telephones: why would I want to telephone someone from an airport? What on Earth would I have to say to them - I'm here!? Come to think of it, an airport is the last place I would want to be these day. My cellphone is big, fragile, impossible to read in sunlight, and now, a couple of years old, the battery has started to die, and won't hold charge, exactly as did all of the others that I had before it. And I bet you that, precisely as with them, when I go back to the
Telefonica shop seeking a new power source they'll tell me again that it's obsolete, get with the programme, oldtimer! Well, they don't say that in Spanish, they say it with their faces, far more eloquently than in words. Why are all these sorts of employees just out of school? Do they all imagine some of us only know Morse code or semaphore? Do they even know what the hell, those are?
You see the magic of photography? In the twinkling of an eye it can take you from the boredom of comparing eyepìeces to the magic of commerce across the world, and through a brief history of signalling. Who'd be without it?
Rob C