From the very first entry – titled “Boredom” and reflective of the dichotomous nature of this conversation – we hit the ground running. On its face, it seems odd to bemoan the dearth of boredom – who wants to be bored? But as so many people are learning, that absence of boredom – having the breadth of the internet at one’s fingertips at all times – precludes the imaginative outbursts that boredom prompts. When there’s no need to figure out something to do, we instead … do nothing, idly scrolling our way through the hours. You might not like being bored, but in some ways, you kind of need to be every once in a while.
A lot of these entries might read as minor, but others are reflective of broader changes. Number 20, for instance, is “The Phone in the Kitchen.” In an age of smartphones, precious few even have a landline anymore. But if you were a teenager back then – as I was – then that phone was a central cog in your social life. We’ve got entries on handwritten letters and penmanship and spelling – all dinosaurs in their way.
As a longtime accumulator of random knowledge, certain entries – “Being the Only One,” “Figuring Out Who That Actor Is” – hit me where I live; remembering trivia is no longer nearly as impressive when everyone has the capability to find the answer in seconds.
On and on the list goes, with every minor shift adding to the pile. What “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet” does so well is illustrate the growth of that pile; while any individual item might be no big deal, the collected set is significant. It’s a list of ways in which the world now is different from the world then – no small thing when dealing with a culture as susceptible to nostalgia as our own.
Obviously, Paul isn’t saying that everything back then was better. Time marches on, after all, and it’s tough to argue against the many benefits that the internet has brought into our lives. But that isn’t really the point. It’s not about whether it used to be better, it’s that it used to be different. And so much of who we are is shaped by the experiences of our formative years; what does it mean when the shape taken by those years is so drastically different from one generation to the next?
“100 Things We've Lost to the Internet” is a fun read for those of us who share some of Paul’s memories and experiences. We remember what it was like and we like to remember. The landscape has shifted, and no doubt it will shift again as technology’s exponential advancement continues on apace. This book serves as a reminder of the simple truth that when gains are made, sometimes something is lost.
