It still blows my mind how ubiquitous communication is now. I just had someone message me instantly from a ship in the Mediterranean, while I'm on a flight in the US.
Even less than a 150 years ago that would have been impossible. And prior to that communication among normal people could take months.
Early Chinese immigrants to the US had to write letters to get physically carried across the pacific ocean… which took like months I think. I don’t think a telegraph cable even exist across the ocean back then.
Now I can just video chat my aunts in China in HD in real time… (tbh I haven’t really talked to them since I left when I was 8, I only ever like briefly say a few words when mom was calling)
So bizzare to be born in this time period…
Like I could just summon any information on a glass thingy whenever I get curious
Hey you
BE MY FRIEND¹
HI HI HI
OMG THIS IS CRAZY
THIS IS JUST ELEMENTAL WITCHCRAFT
This message isn’t real
You’re just hallucinating electrons
Lol
¹Just kidding… unless… 🥺👉👈
GMDSS has a system and procedure for routing phonecalls over VHF. It’s expensive as hell, and the conversation happens over open frequencies, but it works for those times when there’s an emergency. Works all over the world where there’s maritime VHF comms and the GMDSS convention is in effect.
A coworker of mine got a scare once while we were doing a seismic survey far off the coast of Brazil. A message was passed down from the bridge that he had to come up and phone home ASAP. Cases like these rarely happens unless there’s a family emergency such as death and whatnot.
Well, we were all concerned for him, but when he came out to the backdeck, he was laughing at the entire ordeal. Turned out his dad had come across a really good offer for a quad bike, and needed to know if he should order it for him.
10 years ago was 2015. In-flight wifi was definitely already a thing. I just pulled this from an old email.
Enjoy 20 live TV channels and a wide array of on demand TV options as well as other services including WiFi connectivity, messaging, and movies!
This is from Southwest Airlines from 2014.
Actually ten years ago was 2016 and public WiFi absolutely sucked ten years ago.
Look I said 10 years ago it would have been rare but you certainly don’t need to go back 150 years.
It wouldn’t have been rare at all because it wasn’t rare.
Yes, you wouldn’t be video chatting (and still shouldn’t be… it is a plane for crying out loud). But emails were 100% a thing and I had plenty of gchat conversations with colleagues that included the phrase “We are about to land, Ill get back to you when I am at my hotel”.
Yeah people are talking like 2016 was 2006.
Like remember how much better Skype was in 2012 than any of the crap we have now?
VENT! Ha, I remember using that back in the Counterstrike days.
I’m supposed to say ‘fun times’, but I sucked at Counterstrike. Not actually that much fun for me.
Back in 98, my dad managed to reach me on a commercial flight, from a small sailboat he was in the process of sailing down to the Bahamas.
It was completely a fluke it managed to work tho. He hailed a cruise ship on his radio, asking if they could relay a message to the airport I was set to land In, as an unaccompanied minor.
The cruise ships radio Op happened to be radio buddies with someone who worked ATC in a Midwest airport, who then called out asking if any planes were running BOS to LAX with an unaccompanied minor, my plane hapoened to be in range and responded, and a flight attendant brought up to the cockpit, to talk to my dad.
The Atc guy was litterally holding his shortwave or whatever mic up to the VHF, and the guy on the cruise ship doing the same. So it was a bit sketchy as there were 2 extra sets of people having to push to talk at the right times so messages went through and we quickly ran out of the atc guys range.
Good enough for him to confirm id made my flight, and let me know he was alright, but had been delayed by 2 days for weather, and would be flying out to meet me at my aunt’s 3 days late.
It was a pretty cool experience as a kid though.
Unreliable certainly. For as long as there’s radio coverage there’s a way, but it used to be impractical to give passengers enough bandwidth. 20 years ago you’d have to ask the captain nicely to get a call routed (read: have an emergency)
If you allow civilian HAM radio, you go back a few more decades (not quite applicable to planes, but definitely applicable to boats). If you allow Morse code you go back yet a little further.
I was once skyping from Germany with my friend who was deep in some South American jungle and my brother somewhere in an African rain forest.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
In NYC subways, my parents would make phone calls on the D-line while it’s above ground, then once it was about to enter 36 street (upbound direction), they’d be like “about to enter the tunnels, call again when have time” and sometimes they’d keep talking until the signal actually gets cut off.
The most memorable part was the manhattan bridge. They’d get the phone ready and the once they see daylight (or sometimez the night lights, if it’s 6PM), they’d press call and talk for the entire duration of the bridge crossing. Like I remember once I was with my mom and we were heading home, and the subway got the the bridge segment, and mom called home to my older brother to tell him to start cooking the rice with the rice cooker so it’d be ready when we got home.
SO NOSTALGIC
Being out of contact is underrated these days.
Used to be, on a flight or a train, and in many other scenarios, you weren’t expected to work or be contactable. It was time to sit with your thoughts, read something fun, sleep, or converse quietly with someone next to you, often a stranger. That was GOOD, not bad.
While you are absolutely correct, it’s the fact that most people don’t make this choice and it has shifted societal expectations.
I encourage everyone to disconnect as much as possible. Enjoy the wonderful things technology offers us, and equally enjoy breaking free from the chains it introduces.
You picked the wrong line of work.
As a machinist, I’m not expected to work anywhere that’s not in front of a lathe or mill.
As a matter of fact, they does not.
The lathe is from pre 1989 Hungarian People’s Republic though. It’d probably have some cool stories at the very least.
Picked it up during about 15 years as a welder. And I went to community College for a couple years where they had a shop program and learned to weld there.
That being said I could probably learn a lot by taking actual formal classes, especially with CNC these days. Everything I know is manual machining, which is a dying art these days. Most old machinists have either retired or died with their secrets. Under 40 and able to run a lathe or mill with any semblance of accuracy is a surprisingly rare trait these days.
Me, on a plane: sits
The person next to me: so you’re disabled eh? Tell me all about it so I can explain to you how it’s the government’s fault, and then indirectly blame you for not working with partial blindness, one good arm and leg
Or
The person next to me: I couldn’t help but notice the stickers on your luggage and laptop, with the gay flag and the paw prints, I can help you find Jesus again
Or
The people awaiting boarding when I hug and kiss my partner[1] goodbye and cry: is he, uh, you know, is your friend not coming with you?
Me: stewardess, I’m gonna need a new seat
[1]He’s technically my master and not my partner, but try explaining that to like 300 boomers
Yeah, sure, ‘good’…
Lol before smartphones became ubiquitious, my parents went to these stores to buy these weird pre-paid long-distance phone cards to relatives in China because in this era, minutes were still limited and data plans were expensive af.
Like you’d dial a local number in the US then you’d use the phone’s numpad to enter your destination number they’d call your desired number for you then connect you…
Idk how that worked
I saw them being sold anywhere from $10 to $50 with varying minutes
It’s kinda like a gift card. You scratch off a number in the back and that’s your access code, then you just call the number corresponding to your region.
Some phone cards were so scummy and they deducted your minutes while its waiting before it even gets connected. Or just calling to check minutes, and they deduct your minutes for that call before you actually make the long distance call. So you’d have to shop around in different stores to hope their phone cards are less scummy.
Ever since 2014/2015 they got actual smartphones and then just started using WeChat. Free calls and video calls over the internet. And now mobile data is unlimited (and actually affordable compared to before).
But problem is… now CCP is listening in the livingroom… 👀 (cuz they use voice memo instead of typing… so WeChat gets permanent access to the microphone permission…)
I used those to call back to the UK when I moved to the US, back around 2005.
When you entered the number you wanted to call, it would do a VOIP connection from the line you were on to that company to a line in the destination county. So it was an Internet call for the international part (which is how they did it cheaply).
I realized that because the cards I bought were from a company with “VOIP” in the name!
I had one of those Radio Shack tone dialler boxes so that I could pre-program the free US number and the card id number.
Didn’t have internet when I was in Guangzhou all the way until my family left China 2010
I still don’t know if it was even a thing in my area or if it was just because of money issues.
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