Seriously I was astonished hearing our teenagers complaining the plane wifi "sucks" because they had bad ping at fortnite. Like seriously think about it 1 second ungrateful brats.

The idea of an airplane itself would he quite a stretch in 1876 considering the Wright brothers made their famous flight in 1903.

But instantaneous communication? They had telegraph at that time. Even international lines.

What I really miss is the distinction between texting and instant messenging. I LOVED chatting on AIM when I was teenager. When you wanted to talk you signed on and when you were done, you just signed off. Now anyone anywhere can pop up in your pocket at any moment, demanding attention. Worse is that a good portion of people consider it rude to not answer a text immediately or even still, consider a day or 2 to be unreasonably long. Yeah, I might be checking my phone, but that doesn't mean I'm available to talk to you at this exact moment for any myriad of reasons, including that maybe I just don't feel like it. I started treating texts more like email and it has helped so much.

One can still be out of contact by simply not responding. A mobile devices can be disconnected from the network easier than a house with multiple lan lines, just turn it off.

You picked the wrong line of work.

As a machinist, I'm not expected to work anywhere that's not in front of a lathe or mill.

Me, on a plane: sits

The person next to me: so you're disabled eh? Tell me all about it so I can explain to you how it's the government's fault, and then indirectly blame you for not working with partial blindness, one good arm and leg

Or

The person next to me: I couldn't help but notice the stickers on your luggage and laptop, with the gay flag and the paw prints, I can help you find Jesus again

Or

The people awaiting boarding when I hug and kiss my partner[1] goodbye and cry: is he, uh, you know, is your friend not coming with you?

Me: stewardess, I'm gonna need a new seat

Yeah, sure, 'good'...

I picked a longer timeframe because I knew people would have focused on non-civilian communication being possible.

Lol before smartphones became ubiquitious, my parents went to these stores to buy these weird pre-paid long-distance phone cards to relatives in China because in this era, minutes were still limited and data plans were expensive af.

Like you'd dial a local number in the US then you'd use the phone's numpad to enter your destination number they'd call your desired number for you then connect you...

Idk how that worked

I saw them being sold anywhere from $10 to $50 with varying minutes

It's kinda like a gift card. You scratch off a number in the back and that's your access code, then you just call the number corresponding to your region.

Some phone cards were so scummy and they deducted your minutes while its waiting before it even gets connected. Or just calling to check minutes, and they deduct your minutes for that call before you actually make the long distance call. So you'd have to shop around in different stores to hope their phone cards are less scummy.

Ever since 2014/2015 they got actual smartphones and then just started using WeChat. Free calls and video calls over the internet. And now mobile data is unlimited (and actually affordable compared to before).

But problem is... now CCP is listening in the livingroom... 👀 (cuz they use voice memo instead of typing... so WeChat gets permanent access to the microphone permission...)

I would even go as far to say as we do not have it under control* right now it's massively being exploited and endangering humanity.

*I'm missing a better word for this. I don't mean government control but so corporate lobby and malevolent influence of other entities can't run rampant.

I can literally get to know someome 1400kms away and be a buddy with, and can do this with whoever i want in the world in about seconds if i just feel to, that's crazy shit if ya ask me

Some airlines now provide different levels of free wifi the entire flight. Some require a free account that can be a pain to setup, some limit the access to specific apps like Whatsapp, and some like Qatar airways give you full high-speed low latency access.

But wifi on airplanes isn't new, but used to be exclusively paid for slow internet access.

American Airlines is offering free WiFi via AT&T. I also found out if you have WiFi calling enabled you’ll even get phone calls. But that also translates into SMS over WiFi. Baring that, iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp and Messenger all work over WiFi as they don’t need cell service, just internet.

And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.

In NYC subways, my parents would make phone calls on the D-line while it's above ground, then once it was about to enter 36 street (upbound direction), they'd be like "about to enter the tunnels, call again when have time" and sometimes they'd keep talking until the signal actually gets cut off.

The most memorable part was the manhattan bridge. They'd get the phone ready and the once they see daylight (or sometimez the night lights, if it's 6PM), they'd press call and talk for the entire duration of the bridge crossing. Like I remember once I was with my mom and we were heading home, and the subway got the the bridge segment, and mom called home to my older brother to tell him to start cooking the rice with the rice cooker so it'd be ready when we got home.

SO NOSTALGIC