The Strange Things We Now Take Completely For Granted

Modern life is full of things that would have seemed like science fiction a few decades ago.

We can speak to someone on the other side of the world while walking down the high street. We can order dinner without speaking to anyone. We can watch almost any film or television programme whenever we want. We can find our way almost anywhere without looking at a map.

And yet, because we’ve become used to it, most of it barely registers.

For Gen X, there’s an added layer to this. We remember life before many of these things existed. We experienced the transition from one way of doing things to another.

That’s why some of today’s everyday conveniences can still seem slightly strange.

Your entire life is in your pocket

A smartphone is essentially a phone, camera, television, music player, sat nav, newspaper, diary, alarm clock, torch, calculator, address book, banking service, shopping centre and entertainment system all rolled into one.

And we carry it everywhere.

In the 1980s, the idea would have sounded ridiculous.

Even in the 1990s, having all of that in one device would have seemed like something from a futuristic film.

Today, the biggest problem is usually that the battery is down to 12%.

You can find almost anyone

Not that long ago, losing touch with someone could genuinely mean losing touch.

You might move house, change jobs or leave school and gradually lose contact.

Today, if someone wants to find an old school friend, they can search social media.

You can reconnect with people you haven’t spoken to for 30 years.

Whether that’s always a good thing is another question.

We don’t really get lost anymore

Well, most of us don’t.

Your phone knows where you are.

It can tell you exactly which road to take, how long the journey should take and whether there’s a traffic problem ahead.

Before sat nav, getting somewhere unfamiliar was an adventure involving road signs, an atlas and somebody in the passenger seat saying:

“I think we’re supposed to turn left.”

Today, missing a junction can result in your phone calmly recalculating your route.

No arguments required.

The entire world’s music is available instantly

Think about how we used to listen to music.

You bought records, cassettes or CDs.

You made mixtapes.

You listened to the radio.

You borrowed albums from friends.

Now you can search for virtually any artist, album or song and start listening within seconds.

Want a song from 1983?

It’s there.

Something from 1997?

Probably there too.

A forgotten B-side you haven’t heard since you were 19?

There’s a good chance someone has uploaded it.

For people who grew up carefully spending their money on singles and albums, the sheer availability is still extraordinary.

Films don’t have to be watched at a particular time

There was a time when the television schedule controlled your evening.

If your favourite programme started at 8pm, you needed to be sitting down at 8pm.

If you missed it, you hoped somebody had recorded it.

Today, you can start a programme whenever you want.

Pause it.

Rewind it.

Watch another episode.

Stop halfway through and come back three days later.

We have effectively removed the concept of television schedules from much of our lives.

You can order almost anything from your sofa

Need something?

You don’t necessarily need to go anywhere.

Food, clothes, household items, electronics, groceries and countless other products can be ordered online and delivered to your door.

The British high street once meant physically going shopping.

Now the shopping centre can be sitting on your sofa.

And sometimes that’s exactly what we want.

Your supermarket can come to you

Online grocery shopping is particularly strange when you remember what shopping used to involve.

You’d write a list.

Drive to the supermarket.

Walk around every aisle.

Put everything in a trolley.

Queue at the checkout.

Load the car.

Unload the car.

Now you can do much of that without leaving home.

Someone else walks around the supermarket for you.

Although you still have to deal with the classic problem:

“We’ve substituted your item.”

And it’s almost never the thing you’d have chosen yourself.

Cash isn’t essential anymore

There was a time when leaving the house without money was a serious problem.

Today, you can pay for something with your phone or smartwatch.

You might not even carry a wallet.

Contactless payments have become so normal that inserting a card and entering a PIN can feel slightly old-fashioned.

And for Gen X, that’s quite a transformation from the days of saving coins for the phone box.

Your phone knows where your car is

This is one of those things that would have sounded completely unnecessary once.

“Don’t worry, your phone remembers where you parked.”

Brilliant.

Unless you’ve parked somewhere unfamiliar and forgotten whether you left it in the north, south, east or west car park.

Then suddenly the technology becomes essential.

We can translate languages instantly

Need to understand a menu?

Translate it.

Trying to communicate while abroad?

Your phone can help.

Want to know what a sign says?

Point the camera at it.

It’s not always perfect, but the fact that a pocket-sized device can translate text and speech between languages is remarkable.

We just don’t think about it anymore.

We can see the person we’re talking to

Video calls existed before smartphones, but they weren’t exactly an everyday part of life.

Now you can have a video conversation with someone thousands of miles away.

You can see their face.

Show them something.

Have a family conversation.

Join a work meeting.

All from a device that fits in your hand.

For anyone who remembers relying on expensive international telephone calls, it’s extraordinary.

Your watch can tell you almost everything

A modern smartwatch can tell you the time, display messages, show directions, control music, make payments and perform a whole range of other tasks.

A watch used to tell you one thing.

The time.

Perhaps the date if you were feeling particularly fancy.

Now we’ve put a tiny computer on our wrists and think nothing of it.

We can photograph everything

When Gen X was growing up, taking photographs involved a camera, film and eventually getting the film developed.

You didn’t take 50 pictures of your lunch.

You didn’t take six identical photographs and choose the best one.

You had a limited number of exposures.

Every photograph cost money.

Now our phones can take thousands of photographs.

We can edit them instantly.

And yet we still somehow have 14,000 pictures sitting on our phones that we’ll probably never look at again.

We can check the weather almost anywhere

You don’t need to wait for the forecast on the television.

You don’t even necessarily need to listen to the radio.

Your phone can tell you the temperature, rain forecast, wind speed and what the weather is expected to do later.

And yet…

We still look out of the window and say:

“Looks like rain.”

Some things never change.

We can watch live events from almost anywhere

Sports, concerts, news and major events can be watched on devices wherever you happen to be.

The idea that you could be standing in a queue at the supermarket while watching a live sporting event would have seemed extraordinary not that long ago.

Now it’s just another thing your phone does.

We can work from almost anywhere

For previous generations, “going to work” generally meant physically going somewhere.

Today, millions of people can work from home, a café, a hotel or almost anywhere with a decent internet connection.

You can attend a meeting with colleagues you’ve never physically met.

You can send a document around the world in seconds.

You can finish work without necessarily leaving the house.

Again, completely normal now.

But not so long ago, it would have sounded bizarre.

We can find an answer to almost anything

This might be the biggest change of all.

Something is bothering you?

Look it up.

Want to know how something works?

Look it up.

Can’t remember the name of an actor?

Look it up.

Want to know whether your washing machine is making a worrying noise?

Look it up.

Of course, the internet doesn’t always give you the correct answer.

But the sheer amount of information available instantly is extraordinary.

The weirdest thing is how quickly we adapted

Perhaps the most remarkable part isn’t the technology itself.

It’s how quickly we stopped being amazed by it.

The first mobile phones were huge.

Now we complain if our smartphone is slightly too heavy.

The internet once required a noisy dial-up connection.

Now we get annoyed if a webpage takes three seconds to load.

Streaming would once have sounded impossible.

Now we complain when a programme isn’t available on the service we’re subscribed to.

We’ve become accustomed to things that would have seemed extraordinary.

But perhaps we should occasionally stop and think about it

Gen X is in a particularly unusual position.

We remember analogue life.

We remember rotary phones, cassette tapes, paper maps, physical photographs, television schedules and making arrangements without being constantly connected.

We’ve also lived through the arrival of the internet, mobile phones, social media, streaming and smartphones.

We’ve seen the change happen.

And perhaps that’s why we can still appreciate just how strange modern life actually is.

We don’t have flying cars.

We don’t have holidays on the Moon.

But we do have a tiny computer in our pocket that can find our location, play practically any song ever recorded, translate another language, call someone on the other side of the world, order our shopping and tell us whether we need an umbrella.

And we barely think twice about it.

What piece of modern technology or everyday convenience still amazes you when you stop and think about it?