15 Comments
Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

I want to say AC but it’s really dentistry. 150 years ago life expectancy was like 50 and it’s because your teeth would kill you. Electricity is kind of a given right? AC current at least.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

Without question, my CELL PHONE. I use it constantly, to talk and text with my kids and friends, and everything else one might do with a regular phone.

But, perhaps more importantly, I am a senior, living alone in a rural area. There is no high-speed Internet available on my road. I use my phone for everything another person might use their computer for…sending and receiving emails, communicating with my doctor, doing banking, partaking in conferences, streaming videos, downloading, listening to, and reading books, finding store hours, getting directions, reading reviews, you name it.

And being able to order online really helps a lot, especially during Covid!

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

I doubt I could survive without the internet. I say this even though I'm 72 years old and most of my peers can't understand (or don't want to) how the internet works and basically how computers work. To me, the internet is vital, because suppose I want to look something up - maybe even something trivial. At one time, it was possible to phone your local library, ask the librarian the question, give her your phone number, and wait awhile while she looked it up and then returned your call with the answer. With the internet, it's almost instantaneous! I love everything else "modern" too - my cell phone, my iPad, my Apple Watch, my on-demand TV stations, you name it. But none of them would be possible without the internet.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

For the poor and the elderly, electric cars are out of the question. I think we have so much income disparity that climate change is going to enhance it.

I am not hopeful that we can engage in solutions that require listening to one another and compromising. The only way out of all the disruption and dispute requires engagement. I don't think most of us are willing to do that

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

High speed Internet/Broadband

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

Electricity

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

I couldn't live without my desktop computer. I get emails from friends, newsletters from the media, articles from Substack authors, the weather forecast, etc. I also have the Google calendar downloaded which keeps me on time and not forgetting what I need to do during the day. I have a YouTube website with relaxing music playing in the background. I watch most of the programming from PBS. And, I get on Twitter daily to get a good laugh from the people I follow (a very narrow list, but reputable: blue checkmark).

I know I could do all that from a laptop, tablet or smartphone, but have never learned how to do that. Besides, it's much more comfortable sitting in a chair and reading from a large monitor.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

What can't I LITERALLY live without? Without the advances made in fighting heart disease, I would be dead. It's the family killer. For my father-digitalis and rest - age 66. A heart attack 20 years ago has been beaten by stents, stress tests, medicines for blood thinners, angina, blood pressure, cholesterol. Can't take statins, however. Cause excruciating leg pain from thigh to foot, almost unbearable. Cried.

I like emails from book publishers to know the latest and a direct line to Amazon books where I order and spend what I don''t have.

I like google for quick spelling although I could walk 5 steps to Webster's New World College Dictionary with its 1,701 pages.

I rarely use my cell phone to phone, always giving out my land line, waiting to see who it is, then answering it or not. Believe it or not, people went on vacations, to stores WITH NO PHONE !! Paid attention to driving, talked to people, engaged/attended to their children.

I miss tape players. I must have 60 jazz and blues tapes I made from listening to WBGO, Newark, and the last machine I got eats the tapes. So now, I ask Alexa. Love I'm gonna love you like nobody's loved you , come rain or come shine -BBKing & Eric Clapton, and all the latest from that piano playing whiz, Luca Sestak.

Cars of no interest. Anything with 4 tires, an engine, and a steering wheel gets me where I am going.Am for declining use of gasoline, however. But we are only one nation.

Push lawn mowers gave exercise. Tractors & sitting give hemorrhoids & swollen ankles.

Internet, media just trump, so can do without that. We ate at 6:00 & weren't allowed to talk while we listened to the radio news for half an hour. That plus a daily delivered newspaper did it.

And I kind of liked libraries and the card catalog. Never bought the Encyclopedia Britannica from the door to door salesman, however (or the vacuum cleaners. Woman who lived above us on 2nd floor swept carpet after every visitor. Salesman poured dirt on carpet to show how sweeper would efficiently suck it up. It didn't. He was a pretty fast runner, that man, down the steps and feet not even touching the sidewalk ! )

Using all that tech stuff makes a person a machine.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

The perfection of processed paper. Allowed for everything from books to feminine hygiene products. Two things that changed the world!

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Steven Beschloss

I live in Las Vegas and life without A/C would be unbearable. At my age (late 70s) access to the Internet makes life way more enjoyable. I download books from the library, keep in touch with friends, learn about almost anything I want to know with Google. I can't imagine life without it. My 50-something sons use their phones the same way I use my laptop.

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I would not want to do without my PC/Laptop. I can do everything on my PC as I can an on my phone except phone calls as of today. The depth and breadth of knowledge and where to access every type or genre is possible on my laptop, PC, or tablet...along with emails and the word processor. A godsend when doing research for my dissertation!

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iPhone. It does everything: makes and receives phone calls. Sends and receives emails. Sends and receives texts. Enables me to play Wordle and crossword puzzles and other word games and Soduko on the go. Check up on FB and Instagram posts. Check the weather for 10 days, for where I am and where I might be going on vacation. Take great photos such that I never touch my great SLR cameras any longer. And when I went on my first vacation in 3 years in July, and was so excited that I left home the tote bag with my laptop, I could still stay completely in touch with everything on my iPhone.

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Car, just any car; Mobility is freedom, I can’t image myself living without a car.

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Electricity. Without which a lot of the other things wouldn't work.

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I would have to say my cell phone, but for the camera capability of editing and posting to IG/FB. That's how I connect with my community.

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