1994 vs 2009 vs 2017

Yonah Wolf
Aug 25, 2017 · 8 min read

About 8 years ago, I wrote the piece below, it contrasted the technological advances in the 15 years between 1994 and 2009. In the last 8 years since I originally wrote it, a lot more has changed.

Given that, I thought I’d update it a little more — some of my comments are more factual than funny, but I hope you appreciate them:

The Original 1994 vs 2009 Appear in Block Quotes

The updates appear like this.

Just like everyone else, I have a handful of people in my circle that send me about a dozen forwards a day, and just like everyone else, I delete most of them — especially because I am almost guaranteed to get them more than once. Recently a forward has been making the rounds with the subject line — ‘You know that you are living in 2009 when….’

I read the article the first time, and more than any other items on the list one of them caused me to wax nostalgic, it read:

You have 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three

I thought about this a second, and started to count — I currently have — not kidding — a total of 6 phone numbers I can be reached at — My 2 home phones, my work phone, my cell phone, my blackberry (which is essentially a work cell phone) and to keep track, I now use one of those find me services that gives me one phone number that will selectively ring the other 5 based on who’s calling and the time of day.

Thankfully, I’ve consolidated my phone numbers down to 4. On the other hand, two of my kids now have their own phones — so I guess its a wash. Incidentally, at first by happenstance, and then on purpose, the 4 of us have phone numbers in 4 different NYC area codes — ironically, we haven’t lived in NYC in 16 years, and don’t even work in the 5 boroughs anymore

Before starting college at NYU Poly, I was given two placement tests — one in English and one in Math. The English test required me to write an essay. The topic: What do you think is the most significant invention of the 21st century.

I wrote this right after the NYU — Polytechnic University merger, but long before NYU made that poor decision to drop the Poly name altogether — but I’m not bitter :)

My Answer, the Telephone. I went on for two pages to talk about the benefits of having a telephone, and how it changed the face of business, education and personal communications, and how computers using modems would create a second revolution with data via the phone. When I wrote this (in 1994):

1. My family had only one phone number — with no caller id, or call waiting

My parents still had that number up until my Dad’s death in 2011 — same number I believe since 1981 (same ten digits since 84). We’ve now had our home phone # for 16 years, and our cell #’s for 13 thanks to number portability. Remember when you had to change your number each time you changed phone companies?

2. My father did have a pager — but only because he was a property manager who needed to be on call on a weekend if a pipe burst orthere was a fire, etc. Even then, his pager had no LCD. If it beeped, he had to call the answering service to get the message.

I think Pagers have been relegated to Wikipedia entries and Telecom museums

3. The fastest dial-up modem speed at school was 9600bps. (14.4kbps was just coming out). By contrast, the average cable modem speed of 1.5mbps is over 150 times faster.

For the last several years I’ve had 20/30mbps — 20 times faster than in 2009. While a lot of ISPs have priced their 50mbps tier to be the most competitive, you can get Gigabit speeds to the home in some areas

4. My computer didn’t have a hard drive — just two 512K floppy disks. And only 640K of Ram — which means that this e-mail, without formatting probably couldn’t have been loaded all at once. It’s monitor was a 256 Color CGA adapter and 14-inches. It didn’t have a mouse, but that was fine, because it didn’t have a Windows-based operating system.

Computer? Who uses one of those things these days? :)

5. New York City and its immediate surrounding suburbs still only had about 5 or 6 area codes (718,212, 201,914,908, and 516–917 was very new at that time, and not widely in use) Those same area codes have all been split or overlayed with at least 9 more — 732, 973, 551, 845,631,347,646,862,848 — and Other cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston experiencing similar growth.

The NYC Metro Area codes above have added several more in the years since including 929, 934 and 332

6. Most Cell phones were still tethered to cars, and 2 or 3 years later the original Motorola Startac would sell for over $1000

While prices on both “Smart” and “Dumb” phones dropped dramatically since 2009, they’ve gone back up a little bit with the demise of the carrier subsidy, and the irony is that the latest rumored phones — the recently announced Galaxy Note 8 and the rumored iPhone 8 — are hovering around the $1000 mark. I guess the GN8 is 2017’s Motorola StarTac.

7. In my Sophmore year, someone’s pager went off in class and the professor (I’m not making this up) said “Go call your dealer!” — apparently, as the professor explained later — “only two kinds of people had pagers — doctors and drug dealers, and its highly unlikely that you are a doctor taking an undergraduate computer science course in assembly language”.

Now, even classmates of my 4th-grader have cell phones — no joke.

8. If you had an ‘E-mail’ address, it was likely only valid for only one or two networks — like Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve or Genie. If your friends didn’t have the same online service, you couldn’t e-mail them. Again, there wasn’t any web browsers to speak of, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Now all middle schoolers have Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. But not facebook — because that’s where the parents are.

9. When we did get call waiting, around the same time as we had bought a new PC, (a 486 with Windows 3.11 and a 28.8 modem, whose 20 megabyte hard drive had 1/150th of the capacity of my iPod!) it didn’t come without its down side. Anytime someone called while I was online, it would disconnect me — but not immediately, because by the time I got disconnected and my phone rang, the person usually had hung up. I lost a lot of homework this way. We also couldn’t figure out who called because both Caller ID and *69 were not in widespread use.

Now my kids call me when the Wi-Fi is down. If we go somewhere the wi-fi password is the first thing they ask for at the hotel.

10. Toll-free numbers only used area code 800, and most had restrictions so you couldn’t dial them in-state. Now its 888, 877, and 866 too.

Don’t forget 844 and 855

By contrast, 14 years later:
1. My wife and I each have a blackberry and a cell phone

We now only carry one phone apiece — just like everyone else, our employers are BYOD

2. Our home has 2 phone numbers

It actually only has 1, and we hardly ever use it — when it does ring, it’s usually:

  1. An older relative
  2. A friend of the kid who doesn’t yet have a cell phone
  3. A telemarketer
  4. A scammer

3. There are very few places in the US where you can still get away with dialing just seven digits
4. But who cares because we all dial by voice or from our address books

#3 and 4 are still very true :)

5. It’s socially acceptable to walk around talking to yourself — so long as there is an headset in at least one ear.

Who actually still talks on a cell phone? Unless of course you’re either a)In the car or b) Sending a voice message via WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.

6. When you get called from an Area code you don’t recognize, you automatically become wary that its some kind of phone scam.

More true today than it ever was, I no longer answer the phone if you’re not in my address book. If you really want to reach me, leave me a message.

7. I can get a phone number in another area code thousands of miles away just so that my friends and family only have to make a local call

While most people in America today have unlimited calling — at least to the US, we still have fun with area codes. Case in point — our 4 phones in 4 area codes. I also now find that many people’s phone numbers tell you where they grew up — since they got their first number in middle school, and have kept it since.

8. But it doesn’t matter because everyone has free long distance to the US and Canada anyways!

Who needs long distance — we use our favorite video chat app.

9. I can get phone service through a VoIP startup, my TV from the Phone Company and my Internet from the Electric Company.
10. My kids’ elementary school handbook includes ‘Cell phone rules!’

And yet Despite all of these ways to be contacted, 90% of my friends only stay in touch by forwarding silly e-mails.

Wow — this has changed dramatically, I mean, who really uses e-mails anymore? amiright? :) Keeping in touch with friends is why social media was invented! Which leads me to my next list….

… by contrast, 8 years later:

  1. My kids, wife and I all have smartphones. We have 8 different chat apps installed to communicate with each other
  2. … and yet all of them still ignore me even after sending a message with each app.
  3. While the cost of Broadband itself might be cheaper — the fees I pay my ISP are more than the cost of service.
  4. The worst punishment I can give my kids is shutting down their wi-fi — and I even have an app that I can do it with — from anywhere in the world
  5. The biggest benefit to my smartphone is that now when I am shopping in the supermarket, I can text my wife a picture of something to make sure I am buying the right item — without suffering the indignity of trying to describe it to her over the phone…
  6. … because even with all of the digital assistant and to-do list apps on my phone, I still can’t remember what I need to buy at the supermarket.
  7. We now have devices for our keys so that we can use our phones to find them — or use them to find our phones.
  8. We pay hundreds of dollars to buy a new phone, and then use them for 18 months with a cracked screen because screens aren’t covered under warranty, and they’re too expensive to replace.
  9. … and then even though we only buy our phones from the flagship brands — we find it okay to go to a kiosk in a mall’s corridor to fix our broken screen.
  10. We get all of our news (fake or real) from the crappy links that are shared on facebook by friends we haven’t seen in person for 20 years! (No, seriously, so if you’ve read this far, please share!)
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Yonah Wolf

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