I’m trying to think of mother, 1913-1991. Cars were already a thing when she was born. They changed incrementally, but never got harder to operate. Automatic transmission, power steering and brakes, etc. only made driving easier. The changes from washboards to wringer washers to automatic only made things easier. Telephones hardly changed, although touch tones were easier to dial. (We still call it dialing, don’t we.) Letters were still letters and the post office hardly changed. She died just before the Internet became a public thing. Although I used her phone for dialup email in 1989-90 a bit and she found that entirely mystifying. I cannot think of any way in which she had to update her skills to adjust to the then modern life. I don’t think she even had cable TV.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind about computers being “previous times”.
The earlier ones I’ve heard come down as stories, often jocular, so that is maybe how people handled them, learning by a memorable story - or learning the hard way. (And come to think of it, still do.)
There was the story about the country person who went to a big-city hotel and put out the gaslight by blowing it out like a candle. Then going to bed and asphyxiating themselves as they slept.
Or the person who purchased their first car and during their first drive forgetting about the brake - hollering WHOA DOBBIN, WHOA DOBBIN as they ran into an immovable object.
Or the person who thought that electricity was like gaslight, and you could shut it off by pinching the wiring.
My parents got their first TV in 1955 or so, and I wonder how they found the switch from radio. I seemed to be able to use it immediately at age 5, kind of like kids and computers today. Anyone complaining about smart TV should get a dose of fine tuning, vertical and horizontal hold, and fuzzy signals. Ten years later UHF came in, a whole new dial.
In the late '50s all sorts of comedians did bits on how complicated hi-fi was, so that must have been a shock to some people. Before that people started getting washing machines, way more complex. My mother-in-law had a wringer washer into the '80s. Sears still sold them. Modern washers are easier but took a new set of skills.
Laptops today take about a tenth the time to set up versus old desktops. Most of the stuff you had to do yourself, like wifi, is now automated. Look how much easier installs are.
20 years ago I read a paper from IBM about how the problem comes from more functionality being crammed into the same user interface, which means stuff you want gets buried under layers of menus. That means if you want to do something new, you might not even be aware it is possible. That’s what YouTube is for these days.
Taxes might also fit the definition (although thankfully not necessarily as a day-to-day activity). Once a year you’d have to go to the library or post office and pick up a bunch of new forms and rules and then spend a couple of days figuring out what had changed since last year. It seemed like there was always something new that took a while to understand.
My grandmother’s sister was an operator for the Bell system for years. She was young during the switch from operator-assisted calls to direct-dial (in big cities, local direct-dial came in the 1930s, but local operator-assisted persisted in less populated areas through the 1960s).
Apparently young people found it hilarious that older people regarded the loss of the ability to pick up the phone and request to be connected to someone by name as a sign of the apocalypse. Naturally, young people enjoyed the independence of calling without needing an operator, and liked that it saved time-- and that you rarely got told there were no free lines, but you’d get called back as soon as there was one.
There was a period of time when you could direct-dial if your phone had a dial, but if you had an older phone without one, you could still call operated-assisted. Then, at some date, this ended. My grandmother’s grandmother ranted bitterly about having to acquire a new phone, in spite of the fact that the phone company was supplying it for free. She didn’t like it. It didn’t look right-- the ugly dial was inelegant.
My uncle inherited my grandfather’s 72 Chevelle, that originally took leaded gas, but it used 87 just fine after leaded was gone.
Here’s a story about keeping up to date with technology, or more correctly, keeping up to date with technology standards. When southern California switched from 50-hz to 60-hz on their electricity:
I well remember my mother (b. 1905) when confronted with my brother’s then up-to-the-minute “luggable” suitcase computer. She’d retired from her office job before they’d even got electric typewriters, never mind word-processors and the like.
She was very impressed with the word-processor program, but when it got to the end of a line, she automatically leaned out to whack the side of the computer.
If we’re looking for an example of this outside of technology, there’s religion. Look at the Reformation as an example. It was a period when people were being ask to accept and espouse changing doctrines of religious beliefs. And authorities were watching who was saying what.
People had to ask questions like “I’ve always gone into church, lit a candle, and kneeled down to pray. Is that still okay? Am I still supposed to light candles? To kneel? Both? Neither?”
Possibly not, but then again how long have you had your current cell phone? I’ve had mine for four years, but I imagine most people carry the same phone for two to three these days.
But then again, fashion or hairstyle fads would probably change by the season. Don’t forget dances - anyone can dance!
~Max
There was also the switchover from telephone exchange names to all-number calling, as lamented by Allan Sherman:
You are, if I recall correctly, one of the oldest posters on this board, are you not? It’s amazing that your mother used a word processor. This actually makes me feel young, so thanks!
Fashion and hairstyle used to be less forgiving than they are now.
For example, now, many different skirt lengths are acceptable, even for the same event, let alone in the same season.
But there’s a movie from the 1930s called My Favorite Wife where Irene Dunne plays a character who is wearing a dress that is not worn nor unkempt, but is a few years out of date, and the hemline is out-of-fashion, so she is getting stares-- seriously, stares like she’s wearing a man’s suit and clown shoes. Which I suppose was probably somewhat exaggerated during the Depression, but it did have to communicate to audiences, and even people of modest means could take up hemlines or let them down, and use other tricks, like adding lace, to keep a hemline in fashion, and make a dress last several years.
In fact, I can think of another film from about 10 years later called I Was a Male War Bride, where a number of women traveling in subpar conditions to start their lives over in the US because they had married servicemen stationed in Europe, were all very concerned about hemlines in the US. Again, maybe exaggerated, but it read to audiences of the time.
So, I guess it’s always something.
Yeah, that one, not the best of the lot, or of their stuff. (I have the boxed set.) Spike Jones did one. Stan Freberg did one. Even Lenny Bruce did one - where hifi addicts had a diode on their back.
Some people probably aren’t going to recognize that the line about “taking our business to another phone company” is a joke.
And, in the UK, by Sydney Carter:
Standing alone in the damp and the dark
Of a filthy old phone box in Finsbury Park
I dialed FREmantle they give me a FRO,
I asked for a PRImrose, they give me a PRO.
CHORUS
So, Say who you are, love, and not ‘Hello’
Give me your name and give me your number.
Say who you are, love, and not ‘Hello’
If I press button ‘A’ all my pennies will go.
My mother is waiting at Lancaster Gate,
I promised to phone at a quarter to eight.
I’ve done all the things that they tell me to do
But instead of my mother I keep getting you.
There’s many the girl that I’ve got to know
Through a fault on the line of the GPO,
I’d do it again but it wouldn’t be right.
I promised to telephone mother tonight.