We just spent two weeks in Addis with only 1 phone (in case my husband needed to reach me/ us - he didn’t join this time). We only had internet while at the hotel so making plans required patience. Personally, I became a version of my 1990s self. I highly recommend it! Other people commented but not necessarily in a bad way. It was a relaxing trip…
Great post, as usual. Was chuckling so much sent it to my husband. BTW, IG has locked me out of my account for criticizing B/H admin. over their handling of G@_za, so this is the only way I am seeing you now ✌️
Back in, I want to say ... 2007 ish? Somewhere in that range, I was at a party in Baltimore and met someone who did outreach and student interviews locally for Cornell, my alma mater. Cornell is in a pretty rural part of central New York but has always attracted a lot of students from the New York City area, about a 4 hour drive away. She told me that over the previous few years there had been a huge uptick in a very specific reason NYC parents nixed Cornell as a school for their kids: part of the drive takes you through a very rural and mountainous segment of NE Pennsylvania, where at the time there was no cell service, and they were uncomfortable with the thought of their kids being potentially out of contact while driving. This struck me as insane -- after all, within everyone involved's memory, NONE of the drive route had cell service in practice, because most ppl did not have cell phones -- but there it was!
I assume this particular gap in the nationwide cell service map has now been filled in but it was an early peek to me how much people instantly take always-on contact for granted once they get it. Conversely, last night we watched THE WAR OF THE ROSES, from 1989, and there's a sequence where Michael Douglas is hospitalized with what he thinks is a heart attack and gets a message to his wife, who never shows up to get him once the hospital gives him the all clear to go home. This is depicted as being a part of her falling out of love with him, and he's very bummed about it, but he just figures out his own way home and all I could think is that in a contemporary movie he would be in a PANIC that he couldn't get in touch with her and that she wasn't returning his calls/texts.
That's a really interesting supporting anecdote about how quickly we developed psychological dependency on always-on connection. A friend told me a few years ago that her kid's school's prom got canceled at the last minute, because they tried to implement a no-phones policy *at the request of the kids*, but the parents objected because a lot of them have 24/7 trackers on their kids. This was in a very wealthy suburb of gated communities with almost no violent crime.
I think mass shootings have made us more paranoid, and mass shootings are obviously too common and yet also extremely rare and unlikely to happen near you our your family.
We just spent two weeks in Addis with only 1 phone (in case my husband needed to reach me/ us - he didn’t join this time). We only had internet while at the hotel so making plans required patience. Personally, I became a version of my 1990s self. I highly recommend it! Other people commented but not necessarily in a bad way. It was a relaxing trip…
Great post, as usual. Was chuckling so much sent it to my husband. BTW, IG has locked me out of my account for criticizing B/H admin. over their handling of G@_za, so this is the only way I am seeing you now ✌️
Hogby here, reporting for duty
Back in, I want to say ... 2007 ish? Somewhere in that range, I was at a party in Baltimore and met someone who did outreach and student interviews locally for Cornell, my alma mater. Cornell is in a pretty rural part of central New York but has always attracted a lot of students from the New York City area, about a 4 hour drive away. She told me that over the previous few years there had been a huge uptick in a very specific reason NYC parents nixed Cornell as a school for their kids: part of the drive takes you through a very rural and mountainous segment of NE Pennsylvania, where at the time there was no cell service, and they were uncomfortable with the thought of their kids being potentially out of contact while driving. This struck me as insane -- after all, within everyone involved's memory, NONE of the drive route had cell service in practice, because most ppl did not have cell phones -- but there it was!
I assume this particular gap in the nationwide cell service map has now been filled in but it was an early peek to me how much people instantly take always-on contact for granted once they get it. Conversely, last night we watched THE WAR OF THE ROSES, from 1989, and there's a sequence where Michael Douglas is hospitalized with what he thinks is a heart attack and gets a message to his wife, who never shows up to get him once the hospital gives him the all clear to go home. This is depicted as being a part of her falling out of love with him, and he's very bummed about it, but he just figures out his own way home and all I could think is that in a contemporary movie he would be in a PANIC that he couldn't get in touch with her and that she wasn't returning his calls/texts.
That's a really interesting supporting anecdote about how quickly we developed psychological dependency on always-on connection. A friend told me a few years ago that her kid's school's prom got canceled at the last minute, because they tried to implement a no-phones policy *at the request of the kids*, but the parents objected because a lot of them have 24/7 trackers on their kids. This was in a very wealthy suburb of gated communities with almost no violent crime.
I think mass shootings have made us more paranoid, and mass shootings are obviously too common and yet also extremely rare and unlikely to happen near you our your family.