Mental landscapes

[valarltd]

Pandagon had an interesting entry about how cellphones and other tech are rendering some plots obsolete. http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_cellular_telephone_assault_on_fiction/
Go read it. I'll wait.

We don't all use tech well.
Some do. And I wonder if it's a function of age and mental landscape.

Everyone has a mental landscape that's a little different from everyone else's.

In my mental world, telephones hang on walls or sit on desks. They have cords (I never owned a cordless until 2001). They ring. Some of them still have rotary dials. Long distance calls are a rarity.

I'm not saying cellphones don't exist. I've been using one since 2005. But in my head, cellphones aren't what I think of when I see the word "phone."

The news comes on at 5, 5:30, 6 and 10. Round the clock news channels are not actually part of my mental landscape, despite having had one as long as I've had a computer.

Stores are small, often mom & pop places, but they always have exactly what the characters need (unless they don't, for plot reasons). Big box stores are a rarity in my fiction.

When people go on vacation, they drive. Most people in my mental reality don't fly. That's a big luxury, used by movie-star and rich people.

Sometimes I even forget air conditioning.


Examples:
In Chain-male, Chad gets a late night call. He picks up the receiver, wondering who is calling after the news on a Saturday.

With that, I have just revealed I am 40+.
I rewrote it for the final. He checks the screen, sees it's his boyfriend and all is cool.

In Shell-Shocked, the boys have 2 land lines. One for the house, one for Gabe's work. Neither of them has a cellphone, although Sean should, and David probably would have gotten one for Gabe.


I wonder how much of it is age, how much is upbringing, and how much changes with the times.

Comments

[feed-your-muse.livejournal.com]

I was reading something similar in an old issue of SFX magazine last night where an author (whose name I cannot recall) said that a lot of (older) fiction is dated by the absence of mobile phones/ internet; i.e. pre-mobile era suspense is tightened by the protag having to run away from the antagonist to find a phone box to call for help from. However, to me, this assumption that everyone has a mobile phone/ internet access comes from a real standpoint of technological privilege. Even with pay-as-you go not everyone is going to have a mobile phone. Particular groups of people will be less likely to have computers and, if they do have a computer, won't necessarily have internet access. I work in a university and last year was the first time that all students on a particular module had home computers and out of the group 50% still didn't have home access to the internet.
Which all (rather long windedly) boils down to - even in the 21st century not everyone (even young people) will have mobile phones/ internet access so I think that there's still a place in fiction for those who stand sideways of the percieved technological norm.

Merry