Having reliable and cheap lighting at all hours of the day.
Light was very expensive for a lot of human history.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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What wouldn't be?
Something as simple as flipping on a device with a light switch would seen like witchcraft.
Want to know what time it is in the dark of the morning? reliable time keeping might be possible in a house, but certainly not in a bedroom, and certainly not millisecond-accurate or observable in the dark.
I think the only thing they wouldn't be impressed with is alcohol consumption, but even then we have a variety, production scale and safety level they couldn't fathom.
And the capitalist overlords will readily trot out these points and claim we live like nobility from the 1600s while sapping us of our every free moment and waking thought. Forgive my turning this political
forgive
No that's reasonable; this shit is often 'ot has never been better!' Slop, to ignore the fact we're choking on the rotting corpse of our biosphere as the climate turns into an oven and the oppressive anti human politics that enable that shit.
Tons of things. Instantly talking to a person the next town over, let alone the other side of the world. Turning on a light source whenever we want. Freezing a moment in time by taking a photograph. Etc
The pedant in me also feels the need to point out that the 1600s weren't medieval though.
~~medieval~~ crossed out :slight_smile:
Hot water from a tap at home.
Travel 2 cities away and back in the same day.
Wasching and drying a load of clothe in 2h.
I have some spices in my cabinet
Using toilets and showers. Sanitation and hygiene are among the biggest factors in the increase of life expectancy we get to enjoy. Yet we take those things completely for granted.
I promise you one of the first things any time traveller from the past would notice, would be how much nicer everything smells. Not that they did not care about smelling nice, or were content being filthy all the time, we simply take for granted how incredibly easy hygiene has become.
Knowing the exact time. Back then most people probably only had public clocks, like the clock tower on churches, to tell time
There wasn't even a universal time. Every village had its own time. Only the invention of trains made it necessary to synchronize all the times.
I just learned today that the concept of timezones was not invented until 1876.
That feels relatively young for something like that, I would've thought maybe that would've been a little further back.
That feels relatively young for something like that, I wouldβve thought maybe that wouldβve been a little further back.
In some ways it does go further back, because each village basically had its own time. So there were lots and lots of time zones, if you think about it that way.
Being able to use my magical talking rock to talk to people on the other side of the planet.
I have a flashlight in my pocket.
Having a compact energy storage. Coal was fine for steam engines, but gasoline, diesel and related fossil fuels were a game changer. Sure, they pollute, have destroyed our environment, cause various diseases and might even result in our extinction sooner rather than later, but hear me out.
Liquid fuels made it possible to build and operate compact and light engines that provide an amazing amount of power. Also, the fuel lasts a long time compared to coal and wood. This means that we can transport items and people across the globe, visit distant places within a single day, and commute to work in places that have barely any infrastructure.
All of this has transformed individual lives, large parts of the society and even the global economy. Imagine doing all that a hundred years before knowing how to build solar panels and batteries. That sort of global change was totally unimaginable in the 1600s.
But seriously though, that change didnβt come for free, and itβs about time we stop relying on this shortcut. It was literally quick and dirty, so we really need to switch to something more sustainable. If only solar panels had been invented before oilβ¦
10 packs of underwear for $8.99.
Read
Have a drink with ice. Hands down that and air conditioning would be my top two missed conveniences if I went back in time.
Food from thousands of miles away in abundant quantities.
Everything, almost. Cars, phones, computers, spices, water on demand, electricity, the quantity and quality of almost everything, etc.
If the average person from, say, mid 1600's were teleported to now, they would be so unimaginably confused, and hostile towards everything, and that makes sense, since so much has changed.
The internet would be something beyond comprehension for them, yet it's something most of us use multiple times a day.
Have a great day, be kind, and I hope this answers the question! :D
Live past 35.
This is a poor interpretation of average life expectancy numbers. Plenty of people lived into their 60s+, but due to high infant mortality, the average gets pulled way down.
It's a little bit of both. It was not rare to see people in their 60s but it was also not an age most people expected to reach.
this stupid meme needs to die, something like 30-40% of people lived past 60 in the 1600s...
i'm just gonna generalize this to "any year before 1600" and edit the title
It's not about the specific year though, it's just that the average life expectancy includes infant and child mortality, which used to be a lot higher in most countries. This pulls down the average but there were still plenty of people who lived to 50-60. Our upper life expectancy is higher now, but not 50 years higher.
Call