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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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Asklemmy
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Last night my sister and I had a 90 minute conversation on our phones with full-colour, hi-res video, me in the UK, her in NZ. It didn't cost either of us anything. We're in our 70s, such a thing was unimaginable back in the day.
I remember talking to family in Australia from UK on the phone in 90s and it costing multiple £/min with noticeable delay.
Remember the pressure to say everything as fast as possible without lapsing into mundane things? Long distance phone calls were stressful.
The wheeze was to make a reverse charge call and tell the operator your name was "Itsaboy". The call would then be declined.
It cost you internet and your privacy. 🤗
Mate, back in the day there was a phone book in every home with everyone's exact address and phone number in it. If you wanted the phone number of someone in another city, you went to the public library, which had more phone books. If the library was big enough, they had international phone books.
If someone didn't have a phone, you could get their address from the electoral roll, again available at the library.
A lot of people didn't even lock their doors. We did, but the key was hanging up in the garage.
Edit: my internet is unlimited - it doesn't cost me any more to blab for an hour.
You could, however, pay a fee to the phone book company to leave your info off of it.
Not if they were using stolen wifi and Signal \s
Not your privacy if you can find an encrypted video chat software. I'm trying keet.io it's been solid
I was explaining to my 8 year old son only last week about how when I was a boy phones existed but nothing like what we have today. We had one phone in each house, usually in the hallway or bottom or the stairs. Rotary and then digital. Phone books, pay phones, yellow pages, and so on.
The conversation started because we walked past an old BT glass phone box with still had the phone inside and the slot to put coins in. He asked what it was.
This one for me too. I remember watching some movie when I was younger and it had two people talking over a video screen and I thought that when that happens I’ll be actually living in the sci-fi future. Fast forward many years and I’m driving with my husband, regular old day, and as I’m looking out the window I see a girl face timing with somone at the bus stop. And it hits me, I’M HERE, I’M IN THE SCI-FI FUTURE. And that was 15 years ago. It’s missing a bunch of the other cool sci-fi shit, but it’s nailing the dystopian aspect's full on.