What would the world be without all of these smart inventions? How would we live our lives? would we even be alive? Please post your visions of those strange worlds!

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Bonus Agricola .

Smart inventions? I thought you were referencing TVs

Some people already know as they were around before all of this was. I wouldn't miss the TV but I would miss my PC.

I would like to go back to the 1900's and live my life then as the social structure still had strong family ties and familys were inportant to everyone then. Simlpe things also meant more to people, and the telephone was used to talk to people not text or play games.
I could waffle on for ever.

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Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. (Gentle in manner, resolute in execution)

Varium et mutabile semper foemina. (Woman is a ever changeful and capricious thing)

Heh, TV only wastes time that could also be "wasted" in some other way. I consider TV-watching time as "idle time", and people are going to do that anyway regardless of what devices are around to amuse them.

If you could magically remove the television from history but leave all its "useful" spinoff technologies (i.e. a good chunk of modern electronics!), I don't think society would be any more productive. Although the sports equipment and games industries might be a bit bigger.

- J

I've often wondered about this kind of thing. If I was stuck on an island (Typical Robinson Crusoe set up) or transported into the distant past or something... what would I miss?
Two things come directly to mind.
Recorded music and the ability to play it.
Dr Pepper.

A lot of funding for research is gathered through media attention. The more people hear about a subject, the more likely they will become interested and invest. With only radio and newspapers I doubt we would be where we are today. So in fact I think we would be less productive.

And I would have missed Star Trek, that's even worse!

One invention I can do without is mobile phones actually, which started as an excellent invention in terms of communication has now become a torture tool with all those 'funny' ringtones and the fact that nowadays it's hard to talk to someone for 30 mins without being interrupted. My mobile phone is turned off most of the time nowadays, much more relaxed..

As Eddie Hitler says
'You get born, keep your head down and then you die. If your lucky... and There's always the Telly'

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

I could easily live without TV. I only need books [ok, and my pc].

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I agree about the whole book thing, but I am not sure about the whole "PC thing".

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Bonus Agricola .

The first time you got any kind of infection you would very sorely miss modern medicine.

Not picking on you Neverfly, but as mentioned in other similar threads, people that think they want to live their life in the past are usually just cherry-picking from very select nostalgic references.

Life in general, as a whole and on average; has never been easier, safer, longer, or as productive as it is today.

Liesure? Forget it. For almost all the recorded history of civilization, until just a few hundred years ago at most, it was almost totally reserved for a very small elite portion of society. The great masses owe commerce and technology for all of their available modern-day leisure time.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

The mobile phone is interesting in it's own right. I'm no addict by any stretch of the imagination. I don't download ring tones, I don't send or receive text messages, and I don't check email on my phone. However, I do feel rather strange if I leave the house without it. We don't even have a land line at home anymore and haven't for four years now. I take comfort in knowing that I can make a call anytime, anywhere when necessary. When we took a long road trip - I didn't have to worry about needing a reservation for an overnight stay on the way. I looked up a hotel and called for a room about an hour before we stopped.

I took a long trip in my early 20's with no cell phone at all and didn't give it a second thought. Now, I don't leave home without it.

If it didn't exist, I suppose pay phones would still be big as would all sorts of land line advancements.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

But most of the human timeline is not within "history" and didn't include "civilization"... and hunter-gatherer cultures tend to have plenty of free time because it isn't as much work as agriculture... of course, it doesn't get as much in results, either...

Why agriculture?

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Bonus Agricola .