The internet is extensively used for many purposes by us of all ages from the grandkids to the grannies!
I recently connected with an old colleague from my initial end teen days as we began working for the NHS. I found her on Facebook - would never have in a million years otherwise. We chatted about many things mostly of the past what we had achieved and were we had finished. She told me facts that I would have never discovered alone - about my own life and loves and deceased friends. We chatted and chatted for quite a while until the facts sorta ran out. But I know she will keep in touch. In her 80’s now she is off to USA with her son and family for hols I wish her safe journeys!
We often sit and curse our pc’s sometimes heh ? - and those terrible internet providers but what a world we live in now - almost impossible to imagine how to run it and run ourselves without the https:www etc. For many of us it has become a secret friend that can take us anywhere on the globe even follow spaceships heading nowhere we know. Yes dare I say it it would seem a rather limp and lonely world without it all??
Part of my family’s investments could not have progressed as far as it has without the internet. The latest ‘project’ is 2nd hand car sales and without the internet and associated vehicle auctions, it would be an uphill grind trying to source cars for resale. Also good on-line advertising sites help facilitate onward sales. As soon as net zero was mooted and the cessation of new ICE engines by 2030 , I saw the opportunity for a buoyant 2nd hand car market and together with one son-in-law, the new venture was launched. It rapidly grew to be the success it is today and that is thanks to the internet👏
The next project running through my mind is the complete refurbishment of old/worn cars to return them to perfect as they would have been rolling off the production lines. They would not be ‘new’ vehicles and therefore could be sold onwards long after the 2030 deadline. There will be a strong market for such vehicles👍
I think you’ve got that the wrong way round Bret. It should read:- What has modern living prevented you from doing what you could do years back?
(1) Driving into towns and cities without having to pay £12.50 for the privilege…
(2) Meeting all my mates down at the pub for a game of dominoes and a chat.
(3) Having to turn my heating and washer water temperature down because there isn’t enough energy to go round.
(4) Having all my money (pensions) paid into a bank so random companies and hacking low lifes can take it all out without my knowledge.
(5) Being able to go for a browse round the shops in the high street.
(6) Being able to buy locally produced food and veg, only stuff that might be a year old and transported from the other side of the world complete with E numbers and preservatives.
(7) Not walking out in the country after 300 new houses have been built just up the road.
(8) Being able to listen to the English language being spoken as I wander around my local town (Doncaster) now a city and full of charity shops, Turkish barbers shops, pound shops and fast food outlets.
(9) Being stuck in endless traffic jams every day due to road works everywhere putting in pipes, wires and Internet fibre for all the new houses…
(10) Having a quiet afternoon in the garden instead of listening to the constant sound of aircraft roaring overhead and the motorised sound of someone using a power tool of some kind.
(11) Being able to watch good programmes on TV anymore despite their being hundreds of channels.
(12) Believing everything I hear on the BBC news.
(13) I don’t swim anymore after they shut my local pool in favour of apartments.
(14) I don’t play snooker anymore…Refer to number (13)
(15) Walking through woods and fields now occupied by warehouses the size of a small African country (Amazon)
(16) Not seeing my Indian doctor face to face for five years, just phone conversations that I can’t hear or understand.
(17) Having a chat with my Mum and Dad.
On the other hand there are have great strides in a number fields. My field was power electronics. In initially there were units like Ward-Leonard what could be adjustable motors. Then static drive systems were introduced. frpm around 1957. They got more reliable, more sophisticated, and vastly more powerful. That’s just one example…
(18) What would people have become if it wasn’t for the internet. I doubt that I would have spent a life running out in the wild places if there had been the internet in the seventies. I’d have been too involved surfing twitter, looking for past relatives, or writing on a forum instead of living for the moment.
I would have been using a computer to program a machine instead of learning to make things using my hands and manufacturing precision components on a manual machine.
(19) Being an outcast in society for not possessing a smartphone. It is essential equipment for most people these days.
(20) Being able to read a map…No such thing as sat nav in my day.
(21) Watching parents driving kids to school several miles away because they closed all the local schools.
Too few though Besoeker, they all go off to university and get too qualified for such mundane jobs. I’m not blaming the kids, it’s the system that’s wrong.
In my younger day these skilled people were in abundance, now we have to rely on foreign labour.
One MOD site I was responsible for used Schrage motors in one huge building and my crew at that establishment had constant maintenance worries. I was very pleased when the RAF took over all work and so was that division of my crew.
see more of the world in your free hols time with cheap trips to European climes or the South Sea Isles ; far eastern climes - mass travel has been immense? created the opportunity for more leisure time for the working masses - we still work but we can play more! live with less poverty? eat healthier food [if you so choose to] ; education for the masses ; and now of course we see the "second wave of this perhaps in mass migrations of more poor to more rich?
I don’t imagine they wanna be millionaires just a piece of a better life that we have?
