Sure we lost that particular job, but we also gained the job of driving around with a cam car collecting data. Then there’s who ever takes all those pictures and compiles them into street view. Sure its highly automated, but someone had to automate it…
Imgine what the hunters thought when they lost their jobs to farms.
Also rembered what community this was on after I typed all that out…
The irony being how much the standard quality of life has dropped compared to the people seen working in this photo. At some point, expect to be just another pest barely tolerated within the urban environment. For many homeless, that’s what they already are.
I disagree. It has changed and morphed. The weights have shifted, some parts have gotten better, while others have dropped. Overall, quality of life is better now than it was in 1960. Of course this is all immensely subjective and the viewpoint of a homeless person in Moskou cannot be compared to a family man working middle management in Los Angeles.
Yes, the quality of life is certainly better not being able to afford a home with two working couples and being forced to go into debt for decades… That’s why no one ever has any beef with boomers who regurgitate things like your comment.
Life being more expensive is one of the things that has gotten worse, but it is not the only factor that determines quality of life.
Think of medical advances. Many conditions aren’t an immediate death sentence now, like cancer or aids. Life expectancy has grown by a decade since 1960. Old people can be independant for longer. Women can vote and have rights. Black people don’t have to ride in the back of the bus. There’s tons of technological advances that make life better. The first one that comes to mind are video games. Ergonomics clearly wasn’t a thing back in the 60’s, judging from those chairs. There weren’t many other labour rights either, black lung was just a necessary evil.
Today’s financial landscape certainly sucks. It’s practically been a constant crisis since 2008. Life sucks. Always has and always will. I’m not denying that, there’s just nothing I or you can do about it. If life wants to fuck you it’s going to fuck you. Best you can do is enjoy the diner and the movie.
Just gotta find a friendly middle aged white man and you can have this service for free
You carry around a universal translator, and a global atlas in your pocket. Leave me alone.
For a good time, call 1194.
This graffiti was seen, around 1993, in various toilets, referencing the national talking-clock service.
1194 == “On the third tone it will be 3:45 and 30 seconds, beep beep beeep.”
These still exist, except it’s not a number you call, it’s a shortwave station that you tune into.
Check out http://websdr.org/ if you don’t have your own. From there you can play with various shortwave radios from around the world. The first one on my list is my favorite cause it picks up a lot of stuff.
But, when would you use this? Stop at a gas station, and instead of getting a map, you make a phonecall?
Rest area payphones. Its why most rest areas have a huge blown up atlas map these days
edit: and as a note, the death of the rest area payphone is a huge problem some places. you ever look at a coverage map for west virginia? you break down or get lost out there and you’re totally fucked
Yes, but what gorgeous country to get fucked in! When my wife PCSd from Long Island to Fort Knox, we drove through that country several times.
She would also spend a lot of time at Fort Lee (now Gregg-Adams) and the drive from Fort Knox to Fort Lee also crossed amazing parts of WV.
I would think using that service to plan a route ahead of time would be optimal…
This is actually a map of the Netherlands and I’m from there. I’m also old enough to remember a time without mobile phones. This was probably the call centre for triple AAA, in Dutch the ANWB. We had these emergency telephone poles along the highways. When stranded (car broke down) and without a map you could easily call aid through them with these phones, which they also knew where they were, for easy dispatching.
I’m also dutch, and Im pretty sure you couldn’t call for route advice from the ANWB poles. Or at least, you couldn’t in the later years, maybe it was different in the 60s.
It does make a lot more sense these people are planners, not general navigation advisers.