BFTP: 20+ questions about what we did before smart phones

I ran across this list the other day...

"20 Questions I Have For People Who Were In Their 20s Before Cell Phones & Internet" by Samantha Matt, Huffington Post

1. How did you make plans?
2. How did you CANCEL plans?
3. How did you know who was calling you before you picked up the phone?
4. How did you get rid of the fear that is calling people?
5. How did you find out information about people before you went on dates with them?
6. How did you find people to date in the first place???
7. How did you keep tabs on exes?
8. How did you keep tabs on what your entire graduating class from high school was doing?
9. How did you look for jobs?
10. How did your parents get in touch with you when you were out? 
11. How did your survive waiting for meetings, appointments, trains, or anything without being able to pass time by pretending to look busy on your phone?
12. How did you do ANYTHING at work before email?
13. How did you tell co-workers (or someone else you were meeting) that you were going to be late when you were stuck in traffic or stuck on some disabled subway car?
14. How did you sign up for classes at the gym?
15. How did you know where you were or where you were going ever?
16. What did you have to do if you broke down on the side of the road?
17. How did you always have change on you to use these pay phones?
18. How did you research anything for school? Did you have to go through the Encyclopedia?
19. How did you find out about the weather?
20. How did you stay in touch with friends?

Uh, I was in my 50s, I think, before I had a smartphone and 40 before I had Internet access, and I still can't remember...

1. What did we do during boring meetings and lectures?
2. How did we keep track of our loyalty cards?
3. How did we video chat with our grandchildren?
4. How did we bore others with pictures of our grandchildren?
5. How did we remember where we parked at the airport without taking a picture of the space?
6. How did we find our spouse in the grocery store?
7. How did we find our misplaced cell phones without calling the misplaced cellphone with another cellphone?
8. How did we convert foreign currencies when traveling?
9. How did we figure out in what movie we last saw an actor whose name we don't remember?
10. What did you use to set an alarm?
11. How did you take pictures?
12. How did you workout without getting bored? (Wait, there was this thing called a Walkman.)
13. How did you keep track of receipts and phone numbers and mailing addresses?
14. How did you keep kids amused during a car trip or in a restaurant?
15. How did you know if a restaurant or hotel was going to be any good?
16. How did you know if your kid was missing any assignments in school or had any unexcused absences?
17. How did we pay our monthly bills?
18. How did we know what our checking account balance was (and why do we call it a checking account)?
19. Where did we get our jokes?
20. How did we know what our friends were reading and how did we publish our own book reviews?

 And your questions?

Original post 2/22/2015 

Comments

[Jim]

I just wonder what this shutdown would have meant then. No digital learning might be better for some but worse for others.

[Annette Mills]

How did we teach? And in particular, how did we do research? And how did we feel safe doing so? My first classroom didn’t even have a landline phone!

[Doug Johnson]

Jim,

I do remember people taking correspondence courses back in the day. Paper and envelops and pencils etc.

Doug

,

And how did the kids keep from getting bored when the class was irrelevant? (My first libraries and classrooms in the late 70's and 80's did not have phones either!)

Doug