Hacker News Reader

Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

Kids in my highschool used to routinely load up a VW camper van and go surfing in Baja and camping on the beach, without cellphones and without contact most of the trip. No way I'd let my kids do that today.

Side note it's crazy that today a camper van is unaffordable to the rich yet alone a budget highschool vehicle and Pacifico commercials are on TV. The future is weird.

View on HN

>without cellphones and without contact most of the trip

Well, that's a big difference. Even traveling 25 years ago it was pretty accepted that, even if I were traveling with a company, I was pretty much not reachable. Among other things, I did a 10 day sea kayaking trip with a company and we'd have been totally out of communication if something had happened. I think they had VHF but it would have been--maybe if there's a ship on line of sight we could possibly reach them.

Today, I think a lot of people would have a problem with the idea that I might be incommunicado for weeks or months.

You are the one who is setting the boundaries and rules for your own life. Not being reachable for weeks or months is totally fine if that's what someone wants.

Of course. I just think it's probably also true that the expectations of what is customary and "normal" have also changed.

I grew up in a boarding school—-the only checkin was them sending me a letter and me writing back.

By the time a round trip completed—-a broken bone would have completely healed and plaster removed.

Yes, aged 8 went to boarding school. There was no phone for the kids. They did have phones for staff, obviously. In our case they’d call a parent if you broke something. But, communication was a weekly letter. We had letter writing every Sunday morning.

My parents seldom wrote back. My mother would send the occasional post-card, at which point the whole school would comment on how bad her english was.

I got a letter from my father and it was signed off:

“Love Dad

Actually, this is his secretary, but he told me to write love dad on it”

After a while there was a campaign to put phones in boarding schools, so a phone was installed. A single phone for 250 boys. There was always a queue and time was limited. On the plus side, I memorized a lot of phone numbers that I’d never know today.

Event with the phone new joiners to the school were banned from using it for the first 3 weeks on the basis they’d adapt quicker to just break the tie to parents than spend all their time moping on the phone.

What a strange interjection from the secretary! Funny and poignant, with an undercurrent of exasperation?

Yes, I does strike me as someone only someone very undertrained would put in. I found it funny at the time, aged 10 or so. It wasn't bad.

I'd rather have letters from him than not, even with odd secretarial additions.

25 years ago I was in high school and pretty much everyone had an inexpensive cellphone. Where did you live where it's so unreachable?

And EPIRBs have been around for more than 50 years.

When I travelled internationally in the 1990s—so maybe 30 years—I was pretty much unreachable. I’ve never had an EPIRB. And didn’t really have a routinely connected cellphone until probably 25 years ago or so when I got a Treo.

I had a cellphone earlier but it was something I used rarely.

Bought my first MacBook almost 20 years ago now and been almost permanently online since then (for better or worse).

Connectivity existed, esp outbound. Of course it wasn't as ubiquitous and cheap as now, but it was there. Heck Starlink is cheaper than my home fiber.

Laptop connectivity was still pretty awful in the 1990s and even early 2000s. Conference WiFi was something of a joke. You were still often still using Dial-up. It’s probably in the last 20 years or so that cell and WiFi have become pretty much a utility in most cases. Which is a while but I remember when they weren’t.

A pity you wouldn't let your kids do that. There are still kids today with no cellphone doing their things, and being just fine.

TBH I don't think I'd be cooling with them taking a trip on their own driving through Mexico even with cell phones.

A bunch of kids tragically died last month in baja doing this trip but with cell phones. Mexico is not the same as back in the 70s whatever some boneheaded people on this form may say about risks.

Safe to say i wouldn't send me kids to mexico on a surf trip without a cell phone.

>A bunch of kids tragically died last month in baja doing this trip but with cell phones. Mexico is not the same as back in the 70s whatever some boneheaded people on this form may say about risks.

Didn't kids also die in Mexico in 70s? You just didn't hear about it this much.

Along the way, viral often tragic stories made the pessimist out of most of us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com