Everyday technology we use OTL like the internet and cellphones not invented

Watching Netflix' 'Maniac', and I hope I'm not spoiling too much when I say it SEEMS to take place in an alternate timeline. In many ways it feels like someone took the late 20th century (80ies, 90ies) and moved it in a completely different direction, especially technology-wise.

So first of all, how likely is a world without widespread use of cellphones and something like the the internet, post, say, the 1980ies? I'm not saying something like that wouldn't ultimately come around in that timeline, but at least in their version of 2018, it's no celphones, no internet.

What would the economy and culture look like? What alternative technologies, tools and behaviours would be developed, or see greater use?
 
I guess a part would be that people, being less used to have all the answers on the internet in a few seconds would make them more patients. You might also have some participe tape recorder boxes like the participative book boxes OTL
 
Watching Netflix' 'Maniac', and I hope I'm not spoiling too much when I say it SEEMS to take place in an alternate timeline. In many ways it feels like someone took the late 20th century (80ies, 90ies) and moved it in a completely different direction, especially technology-wise.

So first of all, how likely is a world without widespread use of cellphones and something like the the internet, post, say, the 1980ies? I'm not saying something like that wouldn't ultimately come around in that timeline, but at least in their version of 2018, it's no celphones, no internet.

What would the economy and culture look like? What alternative technologies, tools and behaviours would be developed, or see greater use?
I suppose various "non cellular" mobile phone technologies would be in wide spread use.

"Two way pagers" might also be more prevelant.

I could see various "non cellular" nation wide two radio radio networks with telephone interconnection being setup and marketed to those who could afford them (probably businesses, wealthy individuals and professionals who need to be able to keep in touch with clients and colleagues at all times.)

There would probably be various wireless data offerings to help mobile workers access various corporate or govt systems.

There probably would be a lot of different and expensive ways to get some form of "mobile phone" functionality. I'm doubtful they would be very common amongst the general public.

With out the Internet eMail probably never really takes off amongst the general public.

Large corporations, govt agencies etc, probably get their own email systems and what we today would call intra nets. There are probably some service providers that help "glue together" various corporate and govt email systems.

Computer bulliten board systems probably stay more relevant for a longer time.
 
I don't feel like an idiot when someone asks me for my cell phone # or my facebook ID...oh, wait, I don't feel that way now!
 
We live every decade as if the current technology will continue indefinitely. We know inventions will come along, but we don't anticipate their nature. As one who remembers the seventies and eighties, I would have looked forward from 1989 relatively content with the technology of the time. Cell phone networks were highly incomplete, expensive and no substitute for a land line. I had an Apple Macintosh computer for spreadsheets and word processing. I did my income tax return with MacInTax, the predecessor to Turbo Tax, for the first time. But I would need a specially formatted diskette (3.5 in) to share text files with a DOS PC. At the time, I was content with the level of available technology. If the technology of the eighties had continued, we would indeed be using pagers, conventional mail, fax machines (new then), and phone modems that had to be dialed point to point without an Interned. We look at our devices (smart phone, satellite navigation, etc.) very much the same way; we don't anticipate the world of 2028.
 
We live every decade as if the current technology will continue indefinitely. We know inventions will come along, but we don't anticipate their nature. As one who remembers the seventies and eighties, I would have looked forward from 1989 relatively content with the technology of the time. Cell phone networks were highly incomplete, expensive and no substitute for a land line. I had an Apple Macintosh computer for spreadsheets and word processing. I did my income tax return with MacInTax, the predecessor to Turbo Tax, for the first time. But I would need a specially formatted diskette (3.5 in) to share text files with a DOS PC. At the time, I was content with the level of available technology. If the technology of the eighties had continued, we would indeed be using pagers, conventional mail, fax machines (new then), and phone modems that had to be dialed point to point without an Interned. We look at our devices (smart phone, satellite navigation, etc.) very much the same way; we don't anticipate the world of 2028.
To be fair, when I compare 2008 to 2018, the contrast isn't all that high. Granted, in 2008 I thought internet-capable phones were a silly novelty item, and internet streaming sites behind a paywall made me angry, and today everyone has a smartphone and I watch Netflix almost every day. But still I feel 2008-me wouldn't be disoriented at all if they were dropped into 2018

In some regards, less things have changed than I thought (for instance younger me liked to fantasize about much more traumatic political- and international catastrophies). Technology-wise, I feel we had a few close calls- for a moment it seemed google glasses would come to define the decade.

...Actually it's the same as always: the more you think about it, the more you realize how many things have changed, and how many predictions were actually correct. I wanted to mock a magazine in 2008 what showed a 2018-home with talking household robots and then I realize, we got Alexa and these round vacuum house pets. People talked about right-wing parties rising in power and other political upheavals in western Europe, and we get Brexit and the AfD.
 
Delay Everything with 10 years so instead of Internet becoming mainstream in 1995-2000 it becomes mainstream 2005-2010 and Facebook opening in 2014 instead of 2004, Steve Jobs creating the Iphone as the last thing he does Before he dies in 2011 will have political implications as the rise of the far right is delayed and Trump is not elected. Streaming would not be big.
 

Driftless

Donor
Fax technology is a bit older, but if you take that means of communications out, that alters how business gets done. That was once a breakthrough technology, in that reproduced signatures were accepted for all sorts of legal and financial transactions. Perhaps some over-the-phone line encryption tech takes its place? Enigma type machines and enigma wizards in more locations? Having access to that kind of technology would be a great competitive advantage.
 
As society moved through industrialization and modernization, technology gradually made life easier. In the early twentieth century, radio and cinema impacted communication and entertainment, but did not profoundly alter lifestyles in general. Then, television exploded on the market in the fifties. What started as a forum for news and entertainment quickly, painfully depicted the inequities of racial segregation, in the home, every day. And we know what happened in the sixties, or cultural sixties (1963-1973) culminating in the end of the draft on July 1, 1973.

The point is, we don’t always know which technology will make profound changes at its onset. When the world wide web, Internet and e-mail came along in the nineties, they supplemented our lives. Same in the 2000’s when cell phones became affordable and began to replace land lines. But the next profound change came with social media, as it allows users to pick and choose news sources to fit their expectations and pre-conceived notions. Yes, it impacted the American elections in 2016. I will refrain from mentioning names or issues, because this not the forum in AH for current politics. But the point is, just as television had an unforeseen impact, so does social media.

In the sixties, television aided the spread of the counterculture and anti-war protests. In the fifties, history teachers were caught in a double bind over justifying the Nuremburg trials just months after instilling American values against ex post facto laws. War protests raged on, until the next generation could be taught more about the Geneva Convention and the debatable nature of the trials.

We are just starting the process of adjusting to the impact of social media.
 
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Fax technology is a bit older, but if you take that means of communications out, that alters how business gets done. That was once a breakthrough technology, in that reproduced signatures were accepted for all sorts of legal and financial transactions. Perhaps some over-the-phone line encryption tech takes its place? Enigma type machines and enigma wizards in more locations? Having access to that kind of technology would be a great competitive advantage.
Fax machines revolutionized the office in 1988. Xerox patented the first such device in 1964, but its use was complicated and costly. Remember the old telecopiers with the rotating drum? Wire-photo technology is older, confined largely to news media. If you go back to the 19th century, you can find schemes to send copies of telegraph messages.
 
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