A lot of folks relate favorably to our historical articles. One of the things we hear the most is, “Gosh, it must have been so nice to live back then. Things were so much simpler.” And we’re not just talking about what life was like in 1860. A lot of people feel the same way about 1960.
So, with that in mind, I decided to take just one item we all carry around in our purse or pocket today and see whether having it has made our life more or less complicated than it would have been just fifty or sixty years ago. That item is the smartphone.
Okay, if you detest the idea of being constantly connected to the rest of the world 24-7, you’ll say it has made your life more complicated and less pleasant. But let’s look at what the average $400 smartphone does that just a few decades ago required lugging around a host of other items to achieve the same results. If you are like me, you’ll be surprised by just how many of those devices we needed to complete some of our ordinary tasks have gone by the wayside and have been largely replaced by that 3 inch by 6.5-inch, .35-inch thick, 7-ounce smartphone that some of you are reading this article on right now.
First, it’s a wireless telephone. Mobile telephones existed sixty years ago but they were more akin to a radio unit than a true telephone as they needed to send a signal to a base unit that was connected to a traditional landline to complete the connection. While those early units allowed people to communicate while driving or working in an area where there was no readily available telephone, they had a range that was limited to their proximity to an available radio receiver/transmitter. Today’s units are completely independent of hard wires and the tiny lithium batteries that power them provide many hours of use between charges. While cellphone coverage isn’t universally available, it is certainly widespread.
In 1960, the normal means of communication when away from the home or office required access to a payphone, and using a payphone meant carrying coins with you wherever you went. Quite frankly, I can’t recall the last time I had change in my pocket, much less saw a payphone.
We also needed to carry around the addresses and phone numbers of those we might need to communicate with back then. In 1960, most of us either carried one of those little black books or we stuffed several slips of paper with addresses and phone numbers into our wallets. Today, that information is conveniently stored in the contact list on our smartphones. If Suzy and Bill move or change their phone number, there is no need to scratch out the old address and number before writing the new information in the margins of one those tiny pages. Simply electronically edit the information in their contact.
Since our little smartphones can also produce and send emails, we seldom need to look for a pen, paper, envelope, and postage to write a letter or quick note to a colleague or friend. We can quickly and simply send them an email. We don’t even need to use a copy machine or a scanner to produce a written record of what we’ve sent, since our email account retains everything we write, send, and receive. As an alternative to emails, we can send less detailed information via text messaging – all while still retaining a text copy of what we send. These methods of communication are now so prevalent that courts of law now accept them as evidence of timely communication.
Today, if we see something on our drive through town that reminds us about one of those youthful escapades when we were teens and we want to share it with one of our old friends, we can simply pull out the iPhone and give them a call or send them a text. Right then, right there, while it’s fresh in our memory. No need to wait until we get home or worry that it will slip our mind if we do.
Missing an appointment at the dentist to have our teeth cleaned was a regular occurrence forty or fifty years ago. Today, the calendar on our smartphone automatically sends us a message; either a day, an hour, or even ten minutes before any scheduled event or appointment. Maintaining one of those bulky paper calendars that our insurance agent, fuel oil dealer, bank, or service station once plastered their name and phone number all over and then sent us in late in December of every year is a thing of the past.
Flying out to Las Vegas for a long weekend and a show? It used to be that we needed to remember to put our airline ticket or boarding pass along with all our other confirmed reservations in our carry-on where we could easily access it. That is now a thing of the past. Simply load the ticket, the rental car and hotel reservation into our handy-dandy smartphone and a machine will scan our QR code, allowing us to board the plane, find the rental car upon arrival, and instantly provide all the required information needed at the hotel desk to retrieve a keycard to access the room.
If we forgot to reserve a car with navigation when we arrive at Harry Reid International (I’m so old I still refer to it as McCarran), no worries. As long as we have remembered to switch our phone off “Airplane” mode, we can simply tell our phone’s built-in navigator that we want to go the Venetian and we won’t miss a turn. No more bulky Rand McNally Atlas to haul around and no more AAA travel guides we used to pack in our luggage so we could find a place to stay or dine while we are traveling. All that information is readily available within seconds on our smartphone.
Once comfortably situated in our hotel room, there once was a time the night stand held a 15-pound telephone book with no less than 100 pages of restaurant listings to select from. Today, our little smartphones will help us select the perfect spot for dinner and then allow us to book a table without even calling the restaurant. We even get to read consumer reviews before we make our selection. No more spelling my simple Anglo-Saxon name 6 times before the host or hostess gets it right, and no more negotiating for a suitable time to eat. If the first available seating is 9 PM, I know it instantly.
Our inexpensive smart phones take high quality photos that are comparable to those we used to shoot with our $1,000 Nikon with a bag full of interchangeable lenses. We are no longer required to pack multiple rolls of film that need to be constantly replenished and then sent out for costly processing. We can share any photo we take instantly, and we don’t end up paying for a photo of our left shoe if we accidentally press the shoot button before we have the camera aimed at the intended subject. That little smartphone also stores more photographs than 500 photo albums ever could.
Our little smartphones have an app for just about everything under the sun. We no longer need to order checks on a regular basis (50 checks will last me about 2 to 3 years, and I don’t even remember what a first-class postage stamp currently costs). Bills can be paid online, and we can take a photo of that check Aunt Tilly sent us for our birthday and use it to make the deposit without even going to the bank.
Hand held, battery powered portable calculators were a large improvement over slide rules that required an advanced degree in mathematics to operate, but they took up a fair amount of pocket or purse space. Today, every smartphone has its own calculator built right in.
Want to check out the latest headlines in the news or check to see how the stock market is doing? Click on the Bloomberg app on our phone and everything we want or need to know is right there. No need to buy a newspaper that has yesterday’s news today when we can get today’s news almost before it happens.
If we want to record our eight-year-old nephew as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake, we no longer need to tote around a heavy home movie camera and hope we can remember how to use it before the kid has another birthday. Those old 8mm Bolex hand-held movie cameras we grew up with often needed to be reloaded with a fresh roll of film just as little Buster was halfway through blowing out the candles and it wasn’t until sometime in the mid-1970’s that home movie cameras began to record the sound along with the picture. If anything went wrong during the filming, it wasn’t until that film was developed that it was discovered. Today, there is no need for that bulky movie camera or video cam recorder. We can simply record the entire event on our phone and play it back instantly or even send it to a relative who couldn’t make to the party.
Remember when we needed to haul around a transistor radio, and later, a hefty boom-box to listen to the tunes we loved and recorded on cassettes with tape so thin that it either broke or jammed the player on an all too regular basis? No more. Our little phone either holds all our iTunes or easily plays whatever we select from our XM-Sirius or Apple account. It will even play our selections through our car’s sound system.
Forget to lock the car in our haste to make it to the Beach Boys’ eleventh and absolute final farewell concert and the key fob is now out of range? Click on the car’s personalized app and our little phone will contact the vehicle and lock the doors even if we are in a different state. It will even start the engine and turn on the heated seats while the windshield defrosts itself when it’s cold outside.
Don’t feel like wasting an entire day waiting for the HAVC technician to arrive in his very narrow promised 7 AM to 12 PM time window? Have him call our cell phone upon arrival and we can then remotely disarm our security system, unlock the door to our house, and watch him enter on the video screen. If he wanders into an area that is off limits, we can remind him that we have access to all fourteen of our home’s security cameras as well as the phone number of his employer. No more leaving a key hidden under the door mat – where no one would ever think to look – and no more giving a stranger a temporary alarm code that we will need to remember to change when we get home.
Need a flashlight? It’s built in to our smartphone. Want to watch a live feed from the French Open, it’s right there in your hand. Need a deck of cards to play solitaire while you wait for your delayed two-hour flight to DC to be rescheduled? Not anymore, it’s on an app on your phone. You can even load your credit card into the phone so you can pay for another latte while you wait.
By now, you get the picture. That simple life we lived fifty and sixty years ago turns out to be not so simple after all.
