Life before cellphones, Dan Kois, Slate.com:
Recently, a number of my younger coworkers expressed shock that I was able to complete a master’s degree while I held a full-time job. It was easy: I worked at a literary agency during the day, I got off work at 5 p.m., and I studied at night. The key was that this was just after the turn of the millennium. “But what would you do when you had work emails?” these coworkers asked. “I didn’t get work emails,” I said. “I barely had the internet in my apartment.”
Despite being a young teenager at the time, I feel quite lucky that I was able to (mostly) shirk the effects of being always connected during my formative years. Whilst I owned a smartphone at the tail end of high school, I think it was the one-two punch of the unlimited (or at least generous) data plan, combined with push notifications, that really put a nail in the coffin of being able to get up and walk away from technology.
Interesting read here from Kois, one that makes me feel strangely nostalgic for a time that I really never experienced.
19/07/23