There once was a time, before computers, cell phones, texts and emails, when we could actually ignore people. No longer can we enjoy that luxury for more than a few minutes and we take a whole bunch of things for granted, including:

Emailing and texting instead of writing letters or actually speaking to someone.

Also, before Venmo, cash was king and before Wi-Fi, we relied on good, old fashioned phone lines…Yeah, phones had lines.

The iCloud has replaced massive amounts of print-outs and we research with Wikipedia instead of encyclopedias, which are only good for propping up little kids at the dinner table now or more likely just taking up space in a landfill.

As far as entertainment…before Kindle, we visited libraries and bookstores; e-ticketing has replaced purchasing tickets at box offices; we are more likely to subscribe to Netflix than go see a movie in a movie theater; and DVRs have been swapped out for streaming services and On Demand.

For travel, we relied on maps which have been replaced by GPS, we used to have to wait for film to be developed to see our vacation photos instead of benefitting from the instant gratification our smart phones provide, and before tablets, we played car games. Remember punch buggy? Probably not.

Before social media, there was a whole lot more face-to-face interaction. The plus side of life before social media, was that if you lost touch with someone, no one held you accountable. The downside (one of many) was a lot of FOMO!