Are You Old-Fashioned? Am I?
(May 13, 2018) – I’ve been feeling old-fashioned lately, even as I adopt more and more up-to-date habits. I feel very 2018 when I pay for ev-er-y-thing with my reward credit card, including piddly little items like a $5 smoothie. Cash? Old-fashioned. I also feel very 2018 when I re-acquaint myself with French – not with an old high school workbook but on a phone app. Then I go to the grocery store where I use the self-checkout in a very modern way. But wait, Duolingo launched in 2012 and we’ve been doing self-checkout since before the turn of the millennium (an idea hatched in the mid-1980’s!). Maybe I’m not so 2018. Hubby and I just did our first Airbnb experience last month – Airbnb is new, right? – nope, Airbnb has been around for almost ten years! Suddenly, I’m not so up-to-date. I only check one of my three email accounts on my phone and save the other inboxes to read on the desktop computer. That sounds old fashioned. Most of my email is junk mail anyway, full of shopping-related spam (from Gap, Wayfair, Hanes and more) which outnumbers my friends’ or business-related important emails.
I’ve done some researching and some thinking about new versus old – about “cool new tech” vs. the “good old way”. This all started with how I write this blog. Back in high school, I learned to type on a manual typewriter. We were taught to use two spaces after each sentence-ending punctuation. My fingers are still pretty good at touch-typing but they aren’t good at converting to the new, “only one space after a sentence” vogue. That means I’ve been editing all my final drafts for this blog by taking out the extra spaces after a period, exclamation point or question mark. I feel ridiculous doing it but with modern, variable-width fonts it seems that only one space is the norm now.
Then I came upon this article: “One Space Between Each Sentence, They Said. Science Just Proved Them Wrong” by Avi Selk, May 4, Washington Post.com (url below). The article describes past disagreements about one space or two after the end of a sentence. Then it summarizes the work of three psychology researchers from Skidmore College, “who decided it’s time for modern science to sort this out once and for all.” They wrote a paper, published a couple of weeks ago in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, which cites dozens of theories and previous research, and ultimately shows that two spaces after the period is better. The conclusion: It makes reading slightly easier. Control-click the link at the end of this post to see how they came to that decision.
Still, as a human being who’s been around for a few decades and witnessed cultural, natural, and technological changes whipping by, I started to think about other old-fashioned methods I have stubbornly hung on to.
There are some older rituals that seem to be more respectful and honorable, even in their dated-ness. I like sending real paper Thank You notes when I think the level of gratitude calls for it. I do send bona fide snailmail Sympathy cards when a friend’s loved one dies. What’s the alternative? A comment in Facebook? Though I’ve done it, it doesn’t seem proper to me.
Some folks also live on (even past their expiration date, sometimes, ahem) in my hardback little address book – and many other friends, who are still extant, are found only in that little paper book, having not graduated to my cell phone or email contact list. Why keep that paper book instead of moving all that information into my contact list? Because that little book won’t ever up and die like my last cell phone did – taking the contact list with it – followed by a painful backup seek-and-find scenario I had to fight through.
Here’s another paper mode I’m stuck on: my recipe card file is 3×5 cards (or are they 4×6?), in a little box. My wooden recipe card box sits on a cupboard shelf right next to my Mom’s metal recipe card box. The more modern version of me branches out to go to the phone for recipe ideas when I’m making something new that won’t be in either box: just how much Worcestershire sauce do I need for that Remoulade recipe? Ah, ha! Found it online!
How about this? We have picture wall calendars affixed with pushpins right behind the monitor I’m reading this on right now – but I’m not sure they are there for the date reckoning or more for the fabulous pictures of original series Star Trek cast members.
Here’s another true confession: we also have a full-size paper calendar blotter, 1½ feet by 2 feet with big boxes you can write in easily – sitting on the kitchen counter. I always check it before committing to a social engagement. The problem with that paper calendar is this: it does not jump off the kitchen counter to tell me about an upcoming meeting or doctor’s appointment occurring in just a few minutes, like the fabulous calendar app on my phone does. I love that calendar app! I’m still trying to get hubbie to use the calendar on his phone but he hasn’t missed quite enough meetings yet. He’s getting close, though!
When we go on “important” trips, I take a camera-camera. It’s in addition to my fabulous up-to-date super smartphone camera. The little camera, even though it is wi-fi enabled, is still just a camera. Well, it’s a video camera, too, I suppose I should say. For all you youngsters, back in the day we had to have one camera for still photos and one “camcorder” for moving images. Crazy and old-fashioned, huh? Of course, my phone-camera has higher resolution and does cooler tricks than my camera-camera – like the phone camera can mimic aperture control with variable focus (so cool!). But I do like having a dedicated machine with its own battery (and an extra!) with which to take photos. Plus, I really like taking photos. Carrying a real camera means I have a backup plan. When my previous camera went kerflooey on a trip to Scotland, I could keep shooting with my phone, which worked great, of course…even if every picture was tilted a little to the right!
But that brings up the issue of what to do with those digital photos in this modern age. Sure, I’ll drop a few into a Facebook entry. But the most photos I’ve ever posted on Facebook at one time were from our Italy trip a couple of years ago – twenty-seven pictures total in Facebook. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? That was a nice selection but back in film camera days, when I was making real photo albums full of prints, twenty-seven photos would cover six or seven pages of a fifty-page album. Are these little Facebook albums doing justice to our trips and other important events? I still have a pile of scrapbook-y stuff from that Italy trip. And a totebag full of good memorabilia from the Scotland trip, two years before. All that good material isn’t on Facebook, it’s just lying around taking up space. I must dig deep down inside myself to find the motivation to make all that good stuff into organized albums, which will include lots of printed photos. The joyous aspect of those old-fashioned photo albums is that they don’t require log-ons, passwords, cords or batteries, or potentially provide hackers with personal information! There will just be memories, reminders and history.
By now, you’re well aware that I don’t write in a paper journal when something comes into my head. I word-process (type?) for this blog. But as a supervisor (just a couple of years back), I used to hand-write all the first drafts of my employees’ annual performance appraisals on legal-sized pads of yellow paper. I felt the need to be creative, thorough, and really capture the employee’s performance for the year. The words came out better via a ballpoint pen than a keyboard. Then, once streamed out onto paper, I would edit while typing it all into Word, followed by one last step to copy-paste it into our personnel system. That multi-stage system worked for me and I was proud of the job I did writing up fair, complete, thoughtful appraisals.
I don’t keep a daily blog or paper journal or anything like it, unless we’re on a trip. I blog when I feel like it. I do keep the big blotter calendar pages from past months to look back at, just so I can check when I last had an appointment with that doctor or when we had those friends over for dinner or how many days was that Florida vacation? Those big pages are easy to flip through and search. I think my phone calendar app blows away the entries from yesterday and all the previous yesterdays. Not good for historical searches. I’ll have to check.
I also do that other thing that boomers are accused of that looks so old-fashioned. I write SMS texts in full sentences. Subject>verb>object, for the most part, spelled out words and all. I used to have a fellow that worked for me who used as many abbreviations in his emails as he possibly could, assuming his readers would understand his odd abbreviations. And I’m not talking about his using USA for United States of America, or PC for personal computer, EOD for End of Day or any other of the normal government abbreviations, of which we had many. Oh, no, he was former military so he’d abbreviate “nothing further” as nf, meeting to mtg, and on and on. Those were the easy ones. I felt like I was deciphering a coded message just reading a run-of-the-mill email. Phone texts with lots of abbreviations do that to me, too. If taking away one little space after a period at the end of a sentence has a negative affect on the reader’s comprehension consider the impact of turning “your” into “ur” and “be” into “b.” Yuck! Spelling it “ur” means pronouncing it “uhhrrrrr” not “your”. And “b” is just looking for the rest of its letter-friends to make a word. Old-fashioned abbreviations like a delta (δ) for delete or, one I learned while temping at IBM in Norfolk: a pi (Π) for negative, or “w/o” for without or “w/” for with – well, I’m down with all of those – but I’m just SMH b/c IDK, but OMG ILY & I’m just a NOOB so I want 2 just say FWIW, it sometimes gets out of control, ICYMI. DGMW, I’m LOL w/ my silliness but can’t we just take an extra two seconds and write out the real words? TTFN and THX. Yeesh.
Back to paper versus digits, I confess to switching back and forth between reading books made of paper and glue and reading books made of digits and plastic on my Kindle. The Kindle is fantastic – I bought mine for a more-than-a-week trip to Hawaii, where I expected to spend significant time on the beach. Hauling four or five or more books all the way to Hawaii seemed energy- and space-wasteful, so I purchased a Kindle (way back in 2011 after they had been available for a short four years! So hip, was I!). I just can’t get the hang of knowing how far along I am in the “book” with the Kindle. It tells you how you are doing by measuring the percentage of progress through the digital book. I like knowing if I’m moving too fast through a good book and should slow down – or if I’m moving too slowly through a crummy book and I might as well give up and set it aside. Thumbing through the paper pages of a real book, I get instant awareness of my progress. Even though I think I’m pretty good with percentages, it’s just not the same looking at the progress bar or seeing a numeral on a Kindle.
Here’s another one: I love my iPod. I have two, actually. I wish I could squish more digits into my Nano and my tiny, little old Shuffle. I use them for different purposes but both are filled to capacity. To tell the truth, I don’t like the way the music sounds on the iPods very much. I’m not such a throwback as to prefer the warm, scratchy sound of vinyl but I do like my crisp, clear sound of music on a CD. Yummy for the ears.
As a research sidenote for context, speaking of long ago, the first commercial release CD rolled off the assembly line on August 17, 1982, at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, Germany. The first title released was ABBA’s “The Visitors”. In America, the first CD made for commercial release was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” in 1984. Almost 35 years ago.
To me, CDs sound much clearer than the iPod. Perhaps I’m fooling myself and you could tell me my old ears can’t hear the difference but I think they can. Don’t even ask me about my bitrate!!! For another old vs. new, I KNOW I can tell the difference between an average FM radio connection and the average Sirius-XM reception in my car (note: XM – founded in 1988, launched in 2001). Satellite radio has always sounded to me as if it’s coming from underwater – like through clouds, you know? I suppose that’s because it is!!! And don’t even ask me about XM compression issues (because I have no clue)!!! The fabulous list of choices on satellite radio that sound a little warpy and wavy are still better than listening to the same 10 songs on our local FM station over and over!
This zooming by of technology is fun to watch and sometimes fun to be a part of. Granted, technology doesn’t always work perfectly, as we all know. I’d say I’m running about 50-50 on getting my boarding pass to go to my phone (depends on the airline). Thankfully, paper boarding passes still work just fine everywhere. I’m sure there are many technological advances we’d all like to flush down the drain – like robo-calling and spoofing phone numbers that result in our getting spamcall after spamcall. The trade-offs are immense – what technological breakthrough would you give up in order to stop the spamcalls? One-day shipping from Amazon? Would you give that up? Laser measuring tape? Having fun on Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest? How would we connect with one another? Online blogs? If I were that old-fashioned I’d be writing for the local newspaper! But hold on – what’s a “newspaper?”
“One Space Between Each Sentence, They Said. Science Just Proved Them Wrong” by Avi Selk on May 4, Washington Post.com https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/?utm_term=.b679f6ccd33c
Some of my list of Old-Fashioned vs. Modern Advances were derived from “11 Things Worth Doing The Old-Fashioned Way, No Matter How Many Fancy Gadgets You Own” by Sadie Trombetta, Mar 5 2015, bustle.com https://www.bustle.com/articles/66037-11-things-worth-doing-the-old-fashioned-way-no-matter-how-many-fancy-gadgets-you-own
