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

[kadath.livejournal.com]

"Phone" is cell phone. "Land line" is the house phone.

"The news" is something my parents watch. Anyone younger gets their news from the Internet, and maybe the Daily Show.

You buy anything you don't need immediately on the Internet, 'cause it's cheaper there, and it comes right to your door.

The drive/fly decision is based on which will be less hassle, but we mostly don't get vacations because of people's insane work schedules.

[(Anonymous)]

The D-Man Checks In: "News" is something I pick up over the internet; mainly because the wife monopolizes the TV, so it's just less hassle to get on the computer--which I monopolize--where I don't need to pick through all the fluff pieces, but go straight to the stories & issues that actually interest me.

Phone is a hand-held cordless. Don't like cell phones & never did. Don't have a cell phone & can't say right now that I ever do. When I'm out of the house, I am on "Me Time" and do not care to be found or interrupted by callers.

TV & computer screens I am still getting used to as flat & being no thicker than a picture frame. I understand we will have 3D televisions in under 10 years from now. "Bring of that Star Wars 3D Chess game we all saw Chewy & R2D2 playing in Episode 4!!!"

Stores are always big box places with national representation in nearly every state of the union, and maybe with an outlet every 5-10 miles apart in the city where I live, if not the world. Mom & pop joints are for antiques and rare specialty items that are not mainstream enough for the big box places to bother with.

Vacations are mostly within driving distance. No seating problems, no delays, no baggage concerns, no carry-on fees, no missed flights, no unruly passengers (whom I can't just pull over & kick out whenever I choose), no bathroom stink bomb surprises that I can't just roll down a window to ventilate free from, no ticketing problems, no security checkpoints, no more delays on top of the last ones, no bomb-scares, and no cramped leg spaces... and no crash & burn upon landing due to pilot error.

It is part of the time & world we grew up in though, which formed our mental landscape... and how well we might adapt. Personally I like my microwave oven, and can't recall the last time I used a convection oven (but then again I am also a guy).

Sewing machine?!
Phonograph?!
Cassette tape player?!
Transistor AM Radio?!
Metal trash cans?!
Playgrounds with metal slides or jungle gyms standing more than 15' tall?!

"Surely you jest."

[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