“What Did People Do Before Smartphones?” Ian Bogost asked in The Atlantic this past July. (I only just came across this essay.) His short answer: “No one can remember.” His longer answer is, well, bizarre. A taste:
A spine-chilling revelation: We couldn’t remember what we did, because there was nothing to remember having done. We did nothing, and it was horrible. Filling the nothingness with activity of any sort became a constant exercise.
…
Television was another way of killing time. We watched a lot of it. Game shows, daytime soaps, sitcoms, the evening news, MTV—television was just sort of on, sort of all the time. In homes, if people were there to watch them. But also in airports, doctors’ offices, and laundromats. Some train and bus stations had tiny, coin-operated televisions bolted to the arm rests of their seats, a reminder of the desperation people felt when confined.
And we scrolled for ambient information by flipping pages, in whatever newspapers, magazines, or catalogs happened to be nearby. Like smartphones do today, these offered ways to see something—anything—that we hadn’t seen before, while waiting for the next thing to happen. Periodicals were spread in waiting rooms, in airline seat-backs, on benches in the park.
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I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones. A barren expanse of empty time would stretch out before you: waiting for the bus, or for someone to come home, or for the next scheduled event to start. Someone might be late or take longer than expected, but no notice of such delay would arrive, so you’d stare out the window, hoping to see some sign of activity down the block. You’d pace, or sulk, or stew.
The whole thing is here (warning: it’s paywalled).
Now, I am not as down on smartphones as some culture watchers are, and it’s clear that Bogost, a videogame designer and a professor of film and media studies, is mounting a very enthusiastic defense of the devices, and of how they have impacted our lives. But it seems to me that he’s bending waaaaay over backwards to cast the pre-smartphone world in the grayest, dullest sort of light. The first thing I thought of in answer to his headline question — “What Did People Do Before Smartphones?” — was this: I carried a book with me at all times. And if there was any danger of finishing that book before I got home, I would carry a second book with me. It wasn’t horrible. Books made my bag annoyingly heavy, sometimes, but then the Kindle (which predates the smartphone) solved that problem nicely. Time to read — on the subway, standing in a line at the post office, waiting for a friend — was wonderful.
Anyway: Do you remember how you filled your time before smartphones? Was it a horrible exercise in stewing, sulking, or despairing nothingness?
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photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash
Yes, books for me too – paper, then on various palmtops before I got a dedicated eInk device. Usually I’d also have a notebook in case of ideas for whatever I was working on at the time.
Which is how I came to be standing on the underground, a reasonably large chap in a web-gear jacket, reading a paperback copy of a Georgette Heyer book (Regency romance novel) in Very Pink edition. It was great fun to hear people’s minds going “ping”.
There was a glorious period of about three years when I had a Kindle but not a smart phone. My Kindle was almost always with me, and I was reading 50+ books a year!
There’s also a lot of science supporting the idea that “boredom” (i.e. isolation and downtime) plays a major role in steady mental health. It gives our brain a few minutes to relax like a pause between sets at the gym. The terrific book “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport explored this. I had weaned myself off my smart phone for parts of 2021 but of course let it creep back into my life. Need to consider that again.
Books, Books, Books! This guy never read one? I always carried one with me. If not books, then magazines, newspapers, etc.
The world was perfectly delightful before smartphones and social media. You may actually talk to other people, or just stare out the window and think deep thoughts. Or not many thoughts at all, and that’s fine too.
I cannot ever recall being bored, except in artificial situations such as in school detentions. Or in school classrooms being droned at by uninspiribg teachers. And, no I never watched vacuous TV shows – could never stand them!
My number one passion was, like yours, reading. I would – and still do – read anything. No, not cereal packets and trashy newspapers, but books. My home library is delightfully eclectic and includes textbooks of electronics and books of Jewish humour; Poetry, Art, Science, Religion, the tottering piles of books around my home contain every kind of reading imaginable.
And when I am not reading, I like to make things. Basketwork, metalwork, woodwork, electronic circuits, drawings, plays – I enjoy working with my hands and mind. And when else fails, I retreat into my private world and imagine things. This was called “daydreaming” when I was at school, and was considered a Bad Thing, for some reason!
So, no, I don’t need smart phones or game shows or Days of our Lives to keep me from being bored! Life itself is quite enough to keep me amused!
In high school, I used to keep a book or magazine in my lap in class, to sneak-read when I was bored by uninspiring teachers!