# Conversations You Would Have Never Imagined Having Twenty or Thirty Years Ago **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 29, 2024, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conversations-you-would-have-never-imagined-having-twenty-or-thirty-years-ago/1008227 "2024-09-29T00:37:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 30
**Author:** ![Moonrise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonrise/32/14764_2.png) [@Moonrise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonrise)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2024, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conversations-you-would-have-never-imagined-having-twenty-or-thirty-years-ago/1008227/30 "2024-10-03T12:05:18Z")
Actually, this thread reminds me of one I started over 2 years ago : [When Technology Changes Language](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-technology-changes-language/969692). What I wrote in then fits this conversation too. > [@When Technology Changes Language](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-technology-changes-language/969692/1): > > Back in the 90s, I remember a guy seated next to me saying over his then cutting-edge mobile phone “… I can’t tell you right now because I’m on the bus.” > > It was not the first time I’d heard a sentence like this in the previous couple of years and I remember finding it amusing that, before mobile phones, no one would have said “I’m on the bus” unless they were drunk or insane. We can all see you’re on the bus, man ! > > So, a perfectly grammatical sentence that had always been theoretically “utterable” but was [pragmatically](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics) pointless became totally acceptable thanks to a new technology. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conversations-you-would-have-never-imagined-having-twenty-or-thirty-years-ago/1008227)._