# When is the beginning of the "modern era" to you? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 3, 2021, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-the-beginning-of-the-modern-era-to-you/947998 "2021-08-03T21:49:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 54
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-the-beginning-of-the-modern-era-to-you/947998/54 "2021-08-05T18:21:26Z")
In 2019, I met a ‘time-traveler’ from 2002. [Interesting experience](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tales-of-uber/831474/2). Here is what he said was the difference between then and “now”: > [@](#): > > “So… what’s the biggest difference? What change in the world have you noticed most?” > > And it’s here that my Time Traveler – for a man who enters a parcel of land, never to leave for 17 years, in my mind, can be considered as such – began to sound frustrated as we pulled up in front of his destination. > > “You people don’t _talk_ to each other!” > > “Really! How do you mean?” > > “All you do is look at your little TV sets, and when you’re not looking at those, you’re looking at your big TV sets! I go see my friends, and it’s difficult to get a conversation going, you know? They get interrupted, they try to talk to you and their phone at the same time, and they end up talking to their phone, mostly. Even now, I’m going here to say goodbye to my niece, and I know that for the most of the time we’ll have together, she’ll spend looking at her TV. Her _phone_ , dammit, I gotta stop saying ‘TV’.” > > “Wow. It’s that different?” > > “Yes. And there’s TV’s everywhere! On the bus, in restaurants, embedded in cars, on your phones. I was told about this, too, but didn’t really believe it. But, goddamn, there are a lot of TV’s around.” > > “Fascinating.” Turning around to offer my hand, “Lance, I appreciate you answering my questions and I believe we are here.” > > Shaking it, “Yes this is my sister’s place, and no, don’t worry about it. You at least didn’t ask the one everyone asks, about what it’s like in prison. Appreciate it.” Lance gets it. He doesn’t understand it, but he gets that the way we communicate to each other has dramatically shifted. Did y’all read about the time my daughter and her friends used their cell phones to prevent a rape? Probably not, it was my least successful OP of the past few years, [garnering only 6 replies](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gestalt/938324). It was pretty disjointed, to be honest. > [@](#): > > _Boys are the big thing this year, likely forever for some of these girls, and for the boys girls are the hot ticket item as well. Dating and parties ensue._ > > _Kelly (not her name) gets invited to a seniors party by David (again, NHN). Sophia and a couple of her friends get wind of his master plan of getting Kelly drunk and possibly raping her. So Sophia and co went into action:_ > > _… they started texting David_ > _… they texted others at the party_ > _… they went on IG and Snap_ > > _All with the same message: “David is planning on getting Kelly drunk and taking advantage of her…” (Kids don’t think in terms of rape, but, to me, that’s a textbook definition) “… you need to protect her. Now that you know, this is on you.”_ > > _Sophia is relaying developments to her mother and I and it did not take long - within minutes Kelly had two older girls babysitting her, ride homes were arranged (David gave her drinks on the way there), and the walk of shame the next school morn was performed by David, not Kelly._ I also started another thread about the nation’s “[nahployment crisis](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-nahployment-crisis/941117)”, noting that much of the reluctance to go back to $8/hour jobs was because cell phones opened up opportunities to people who would not have had those opportunities in an earlier era: > [@](#): > > Where, for Sophia, is the incentive to run your cash register? Why would she want to buy clothes and makeup and transportation to be a part-time counter girl at Macy’s? She’s not limited to the old ways of doing things, and with cheap cell phones and data plans, neither are her friends or a lot of the people who, in earlier times, would be filling these jobs. Now? Now they just do online surveys for Amazon gift cards and use those instead of cash. Why work for the companies which want to pay a mere $8/hour and require transportation, uniforms, makeup, etc, when you can sit in your dorm room and Zoom tutor 3 high school kids in the same hour, on the same book report, for $15-25 each, using your free IG and Snap accounts to draw business nationwide? I understand that the OP is looking for ones personal opinion, and while I used a historical argument, that doesn’t mean there are personal observations that went into this. I paid off my divorce using mobile technology, in a manner which couldn’t be possible in 2006. I modify client documents while sitting in parking lots, something which wasn’t possible in 2006. My teen daughter gets word of a nasty situation as old as time itself and utilizes technology unavailable when she was born to prevent it. So, my argument was historic based, but the personal anecdata is there as well. Mechanizing tasks is definitely ‘modern’, no doubt about it. But even in 2004 I couldn’t Uber (ride or drive), edit documents on my phone for my clients, prevent rapes by making hundreds of others aware of a single persons intentions, or have a conversation with people like Mark Cuban, Martina Navratilova, or even Darryl from _Storage Wars_, and this is all because of the truly _modern_ shift which has occurred - the ability to reach hundreds of millions of people directly. And a world where I can’t do the above isn’t really modern. Again, IMHO. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-is-the-beginning-of-the-modern-era-to-you/947998)._