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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

I remember a world without the internet, without personal computers, without ATM machines. I am a member of the last generation (until the apocalypse) who will know what life was like without these things. Traveling was more of an adventure back then because you were pretty much cut off from home. Nowadays, being away is not so different from being at home.

We may be living on the moon in 2049. Whether that represents a net improvement in the human condition is another matter altogether.

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I remember black and white television, and CRT TV screens which shrunk and faded to little dots when shut off. I remember having one telephone in the house. I remember not having a computer in the house, then getting one (Sinclair ZX81). I too remember life before ATMs.

In all these cases, I was a kid - these memories are all from maybe the age of 3-4 through early teens. I never navigated adult life without understanding computers, although early adult life was without cell phone, without internet access, without email, etc.

What I do remember is watching people adjust to these things. They were a novelty, and in many cases, became expected/required for 'modern life'. I was an early adopter, so even watching people my own age was interesting because I could see people struggle with some tech or even concepts, and hearing peoples' descriptions of technology changes has been interesting (often based on rumor or just wrong).

re: being 'away' from home - in elementary school, we had a multi-week project to "plan a trip" - learning about maps, travel distance, budgeting for hotels, food, etc. We had to write away to AAA for maps and info, then plan out where we'd drive, where gas stations were, etc. That was a class project. Today, you literally get in a car and talk to a device (or the car) and say "give me directions to ...." some place halfway across the country, and you'll get accurate turn by turn directions, with live traffic updates, and you can find food/gas/shelter all while driving. Insane to think of those changes, but it's just 'normal' to my younger family.

You definitely tended to plan trips, and activities generally, more. It's probably one reason I tend to be more structured around travel than a lot of people I know.

That said, some of it is just doing more self-service planning. We used to use travel agents more--I still use specialized services for some things. And we'd just ask the hotel concierge to arrange a dinner rather than go on Trip Advisor and book a reservation online.

I remember all of these things, too. I also remember trying to explain to my great grandmother, who was born in the 19th century, how it was that my brother and I were able to control what was happening on the TV screen.

And that's all I'm going to reflect on for now, lest I become tempted to burn a week's worth of evenings reading Ray Kurzweil.

Well I had this kind of travel (no phone, no credit card just some cash and 1200 page lonely planet india book) in 2008 and 2010. Heck, 2 years ago I could still have the same when hiking through everest region, if i didn't pay for their wifi internet.

Its still out there if you accept taking a modest comfort hit. Just one tip - bring more cash than you expect, even with reserve

Sure, it's still possible to get away from civilization, but those opportunities are becoming more and more rare (and require more and more acceptance of physical discomfort and risks to your health). But before the internet, all travel was like that. If you left home you had no choice but to leave access to some important support structures in your life behind, and that gave travel a fundamentally different character than it has today.

Living on the moon may similarly lose a lot of its charm once it becomes routine.

Why not just turn off your phone while traveling, or leave it at home?

I'm not sure it's so much about communicating back home; I don't really stay in close touch with friends/family when I'm traveling.

(Business is a different matter. I can far better continue to work today as usual even if I'm on the other side of the planet than I could have in the next city a few decades ago.)

It's more that apps (maps, airlines, tripadvisor, restaurant/hotel sites, etc.) have really transformed travel to many places in a huge number of ways over just about the past 10 years. I can't say I would really give that up very willingly.

[Added: Though, if I'm being honest, I'd admit that expectations about being able to be reached and to reach others have shifted. When cell phones started to become popular, I sort of disliked how a lot of people increasingly assumed you could always call for help in an emergency. Today, if I were going to be in a remote area for an extended period by myself, I'd probably find it hard to justify not having a satellite messaging system.]

On my first trip to Europe I drove from Paris to Nice, stopping over in Epinal. We didn't have a GPS device and our phones didn't work. We did have some printed out directions from MapQuest IIRC. We still talk about that adventure today, "after the 13th roundabout take the second exit". Was this 12 or 13?

> directions from MapQuest

Heh. When I was traveling in Europe in the mid-80s we had to use actual maps. :-)

Great point. We also had a map, which ended up being crucial.

Contrast my experience with those of younger friends I have traveled with who will spent an hour on TripAdvisor prior to walking inside a restaurant :(

While I am not so old I remember a time before dialup, I definitely remember travelling without basically all the things that you mention here. To me, the more things have been said to change, the more they are exactly the same. Consider that perhaps a perceived difference lies mostly in the eye of the beholder.

No, things really are different now. Travel is much easier. I think it's arguable whether or not that makes it better. It certainly seems better in the moment if you don't have to worry about, say, running out of cash or finding a place to sleep. But in hindsight, a big part of the benefit of travel in the old days (IMHO) was that it forced you to get out of your comfort zone and face challenges that you otherwise would not have faced. For me, travel is (or at least should be) about more than just getting a selfie in front of the Eiffel tower.

Bringing this back to the OP, we may discover that a big part of the charm of living on the moon is in our imagination. Once we actually making living on the moon routine we'll discover that it's actually not such a nice place to be. It's dusty. It's all the same shade of grey. The weather sucks. The best we can hope for is to turn the moon into another Las Vegas or Dubai, which are also dusty drab places with crappy weather. But once we do that, what will we really have gained? You might as well just stay in Vegas. It's cheaper.

Traveling with a smartphone can also have the opposite effect. It makes us overconfident. On my honeymoon a few years back, we used Google Maps to take a scenic route [1]. Google Maps gave an ETA of 2 hours and a sign said it required a 4x4 vehicle but wasn't too worried because I had a Jeep 4x4 rental car. Long story short - it took 5.5 hours, required rock climbing and driving through mud pits deeper than the vehicle all without cell service and no humans in sight.

[1] https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/7300-mana-r...

I moved to Germany from the US, and I’d say that traveling is still very different from being at home in 2019.

With regard to connection reducing the adventure when traveling, how connected you are at any time can be a choice. Sure, back in the day you had no life line. But to me it’s a bit like free solo climbing (no ropes) vs lead climbing. Free solo is max adventure but the consequences are higher. It’s your choice in what you want the challenge to be. But if you really only care about challenging yourself on the climb itself and you don’t fall in either, was there really much of a difference? Having the safety net let’s you push harder and avoid being too conservative

I don’t think the parent comment was saying that having a safety net is bad, just that it is different.

And having a safety net definitely changes the dynamic of travel. I can’t imagine not having my phone with me, especially on a journey. And that’s not bad.

I think we have collectively, unwittingly entered a transhuman state. Our phones are as much a part of us as anything else.

For me, and maybe it's because I did so much travel pre-smartphone and then pre-international data, it's not so much about the lifeline/safety net.

It's more about the ready availability of information--which is more or less important (and available online) depending upon where you are. Trekking in Nepal I'm guessing things aren't as different from 20 years ago as they would be in a random Asian capital where I find having a smartphone makes getting around easier/better compared to even 5 years ago.

While you are not wrong, there is a big difference between choosing not to use something, vs not having the option to. You can get much more peace of mind in the latter, even thought the situation is the same.

I remember being bored. Fondly in hindsight.

Before the Internet, I always had a nice backlog of books to read.

And I also remember those times quite fondly.

Maybe it's worth it to do a experiment, by leaving a day and doing precisely nothing -- not allowing phone/internet at all. I'm not sure if I'll think fondly of that years down the line but I may be wrong.

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