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What is this?
Are necessities really necessities?
Published Tuesday, October 14, 2008
It's amazing to think what life was like without all of the "necessities" we have in our life. If you go back far enough, these necessities were just conveniences.
But now, it seems like you need to have not only electricity and water but also cell phones and especially Internet. You might wonder why I am writing about that. Well, that's because we had to deal with losing our Internet connection yesterday.
In a world of 24-hour news and having a Web site that is being updated constantly, losing our Internet connection is devastating. The only way we could check our site was through a dial-up connection. Yep, that's right, a dial-up connection.
Brent Maze | Managing Editor
I haven't been on a dial-up connection in a long time. A 56k dial-up connection 10 years ago was lightning speed. Now, that's terrible compared to having 2-, 3- and even 6-MB or higher lines that we have today.
Not only could we not access our Web site yesterday for most of the day, we also lost our ability to respond to e-mails. So, if you tried to send us one yesterday, then understand why we didn't get back to you.
Losing Internet isn't the worst thing in the world. We could have actually lost power here in the office. That would have been much worse only because we would have had to go to one of our sister papers to create our next edition.
The closest I can remember being without all of these "necessities" was during the 1993 blizzard when we got 13 inches of snow. We lost electricity and phones for several days. We were fortunate to still have a gas furnace that heated our home.
That was actually one of the most fun times in my life, getting outside and playing in the snow during the day while living by candlelight at night.
I've heard stories from my grandparents and their brothers and sisters about how they used to live before getting electricity and city water. It always sounded like they preferred those days to today's living. That might have been because our lives were so much simpler.
We didn't have to get an immediate answer from someone. We had the time to wait several days on a response through the mail. Now, it doesn't even seem like we have the time to reply to an e-mail.
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Comments
Posted by 2byz (anonymous) on October 14, 2008 at 10:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
This is just what I was referring to when I stated ( in another opinon ) that as a society we are too greedy, that life should be much simpler!!
Posted by November162000 (anonymous) on October 15, 2008 at 8:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I'm old enough to remember a simpler time. Life was much better then, in lots of ways. I wish my children could have know a time without cell phones, internet, shopping malls every ten miles, traffic lights every fifty feet, and so many people on the road that you could stir them with a stick. A time when people had enough raising to know how to do the right thing without having to have a rule for everything. A time when people had some common sense and actually used it.
Posted by Tommy (anonymous) on October 15, 2008 at 3:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The funniest thing happened to me the other day, concerning how things have changed. My mother-in-law still has a rotary telephone in one of her rooms. My 8 year old nephew was going to make a call and his dad told him to go downstairs and use that phone (the rotary). The 8 year old comes back upstairs and states," I don't know how to dial that phone". His dad had to teach this child, who can navigate the internet and use an X box and playstation game, how to dial a rotary phone. Man does this make me feel old when this is the type of phone we all use to have.
Posted by November162000 (anonymous) on October 15, 2008 at 3:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)
That's true. And back in those days it didn't seem to be necessary to stay in constant and continuous communication. People, even teenagers, were able to drive and even go as much as fifteen seconds without having to call someone. Some call it progress.
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