Even less than a 150 years ago that would have been impossible. And prior to that communication among normal people could take months.
Ok people, how do you get texts in the air? Do you have to buy airplane wifi?
Some airlines now provide different levels of free wifi the entire flight. Some require a free account that can be a pain to setup, some limit the access to specific apps like Whatsapp, and some like Qatar airways give you full high-speed low latency access.
But wifi on airplanes isn’t new, but used to be exclusively paid for slow internet access.
American Airlines is offering free WiFi via AT&T. I also found out if you have WiFi calling enabled you’ll even get phone calls. But that also translates into SMS over WiFi. Baring that, iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp and Messenger all work over WiFi as they don’t need cell service, just internet.
150 years ago, you being on a plane wouldve been unthinkable, let alone instantaneous international communication
Seriously I was astonished hearing our teenagers complaining the plane wifi “sucks” because they had bad ping at fortnite. Like seriously think about it 1 second ungrateful brats.
Didn’t have internet when I was in Guangzhou all the way until my family left China 2010
I still don’t know if it was even a thing in my area or if it was just because of money issues.
my ex-in laws in Jiangxi got it around the same time too
The idea of an airplane itself would he quite a stretch in 1876 considering the Wright brothers made their famous flight in 1903.
But instantaneous communication? They had telegraph at that time. Even international lines.
My point was more about instantaneous communication for civilians between a ship in the middle of the sea and an airplane half a world away.
Even if the plane existed you’re not gonna be running a telegraph cable to that or the ship. Even if you focused on radio, a general passenger wouldn’t be able to use it on a whim.
I can’t get shit in the air.
I remember calling someone in another country was super expensive but you could predial some super long numbers which made it cheaper somehow
so the opposite of jail calls… 🤔
Lol before smartphones became ubiquitious, my parents went to these stores to buy these weird pre-paid long-distance phone cards to relatives in China because in this era, minutes were still limited and data plans were expensive af.
Like you’d dial a local number in the US then you’d use the phone’s numpad to enter your destination number they’d call your desired number for you then connect you…
Idk how that worked
I saw them being sold anywhere from $10 to $50 with varying minutes
It’s kinda like a gift card. You scratch off a number in the back and that’s your access code, then you just call the number corresponding to your region.
Some phone cards were so scummy and they deducted your minutes while its waiting before it even gets connected. Or just calling to check minutes, and they deduct your minutes for that call before you actually make the long distance call. So you’d have to shop around in different stores to hope their phone cards are less scummy.
Ever since 2014/2015 they got actual smartphones and then just started using WeChat. Free calls and video calls over the internet. And now mobile data is unlimited (and actually affordable compared to before).
But problem is… now CCP is listening in the livingroom… 👀 (cuz they use voice memo instead of typing… so WeChat gets permanent access to the microphone permission…)
I used those to call back to the UK when I moved to the US, back around 2005.
When you entered the number you wanted to call, it would do a VOIP connection from the line you were on to that company to a line in the destination county. So it was an Internet call for the international part (which is how they did it cheaply).
I realized that because the cards I bought were from a company with “VOIP” in the name!
I had one of those Radio Shack tone dialler boxes so that I could pre-program the free US number and the card id number.
Dial down the center.
Being out of contact is underrated these days.
Used to be, on a flight or a train, and in many other scenarios, you weren’t expected to work or be contactable. It was time to sit with your thoughts, read something fun, sleep, or converse quietly with someone next to you, often a stranger. That was GOOD, not bad.
Me, on a plane: sits
The person next to me: so you’re disabled eh? Tell me all about it so I can explain to you how it’s the government’s fault, and then indirectly blame you for not working with partial blindness, one good arm and leg
Or
The person next to me: I couldn’t help but notice the stickers on your luggage and laptop, with the gay flag and the paw prints, I can help you find Jesus again
Or
The people awaiting boarding when I hug and kiss my partner[1] goodbye and cry: is he, uh, you know, is your friend not coming with you?
Me: stewardess, I’m gonna need a new seat
[1]
He’s technically my master and not my partner, but try explaining that to like 300 boomers
Yeah, sure, ‘good’…
You picked the wrong line of work.
As a machinist, I’m not expected to work anywhere that’s not in front of a lathe or mill.
Did you go to trade school to become a machinist?
Picked it up during about 15 years as a welder. And I went to community College for a couple years where they had a shop program and learned to weld there.
That being said I could probably learn a lot by taking actual formal classes, especially with CNC these days. Everything I know is manual machining, which is a dying art these days. Most old machinists have either retired or died with their secrets. Under 40 and able to run a lathe or mill with any semblance of accuracy is a surprisingly rare trait these days.
Let us know if it asks for your uneaten peanuts or tries to show you pictures of it’s vacation.
As a matter of fact, they do not.
The lathe is from pre 1989 Hungarian People’s Republic though. It’d probably have some cool stories at the very least.
It will tell you about Grandma’s Töltött Káposzta.
What I really miss is the distinction between texting and instant messenging. I LOVED chatting on AIM when I was teenager. When you wanted to talk you signed on and when you were done, you just signed off. Now anyone anywhere can pop up in your pocket at any moment, demanding attention. Worse is that a good portion of people consider it rude to not answer a text immediately or even still, consider a day or 2 to be unreasonably long. Yeah, I might be checking my phone, but that doesn’t mean I’m available to talk to you at this exact moment for any myriad of reasons, including that maybe I just don’t feel like it. I started treating texts more like email and it has helped so much.
One can still be out of contact by simply not responding. A mobile devices can be disconnected from the network easier than a house with multiple lan lines, just turn it off.
While you are absolutely correct, it’s the fact that most people don’t make this choice and it has shifted societal expectations.
I encourage everyone to disconnect as much as possible. Enjoy the wonderful things technology offers us, and equally enjoy breaking free from the chains it introduces.
Agree with you there. I used to just tell people owl was traveling and couldn’t respond. But it’s still pretty amazing that it’s possible now.
I went travelling in the 90s, for a year. I spoke to my family once or twice on the phone while I was gone. One time at Christmas, when I knew someone would be home, and the 2nd time on a date we had agreed on before I left.
It was awesome to be unreachable.
It’s a double-edged sword.
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10 years ago was 2015. In-flight wifi was definitely already a thing. I just pulled this from an old email.
Enjoy 20 live TV channels and a wide array of on demand TV options as well as other services including WiFi connectivity, messaging, and movies!
This is from Southwest Airlines from 2014.
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It wouldn’t have been rare at all because it wasn’t rare.
Yes, you wouldn’t be video chatting (and still shouldn’t be… it is a plane for crying out loud). But emails were 100% a thing and I had plenty of gchat conversations with colleagues that included the phrase “We are about to land, Ill get back to you when I am at my hotel”.
Okay, THIS I need someone with a more reliable brain to chime in on. But I want to say it was actually easier to IM on a plane (assuming your employer paid for the wifi which was expensive as hell) than in an airport due to a mix of cell phone dead spots and shit APs in most of the major airports.
Yeah people are talking like 2016 was 2006.
Like remember how much better Skype was in 2012 than any of the crap we have now?
Xfire’s corpse in the corner: …
Holy shit, xfire… That’s a deep cut.
Ventrilo was cool too
Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA
I feel you man
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Unreliable certainly. For as long as there’s radio coverage there’s a way, but it used to be impractical to give passengers enough bandwidth. 20 years ago you’d have to ask the captain nicely to get a call routed (read: have an emergency)
If you allow civilian HAM radio, you go back a few more decades (not quite applicable to planes, but definitely applicable to boats). If you allow Morse code you go back yet a little further.
150 years? That would have been damned near impossible 25 years ago, or at least prohibitively expensive for a civilian to just do off the cuff.
I picked a longer timeframe because I knew people would have focused on non-civilian communication being possible.
Ventrilo was cool tooEdit: replied to the wrong comment.
I can get real-time death threats from some kid from Australia while sitting in Europe, it’s truly a great time to be alive
Early Chinese immigrants to the US had to write letters to get physically carried across the pacific ocean… which took like months I think. I don’t think a telegraph cable even exist across the ocean back then.
Now I can just video chat my aunts in China in HD in real time… (tbh I haven’t really talked to them since I left when I was 8, I only ever like briefly say a few words when mom was calling)
So bizzare to be born in this time period…
Like I could just summon any information on a glass thingy whenever I get curious
You didn’t give dates but there were definitely telegraph cables crossing the oceans prior to 1900’s
Were regular people able to send communication or was it just political/military/business communication?
I can literally get to know someome 1400kms away and be a buddy with, and can do this with whoever i want in the world in about seconds if i just feel to, that’s crazy shit if ya ask me
Hey you
BE MY FRIEND¹
HI HI HI
OMG THIS IS CRAZY
THIS IS JUST ELEMENTAL WITCHCRAFT
This message isn’t real
You’re just hallucinating electrons
Lol
¹Just kidding… unless… 🥺👉👈
Dear wizard, i , axolotl magnificus, indeed want to be your friemd if you feel to
Lol so um… like… how do we do this? do we just click the button on the diplomacy menu and then… like… chill for the next 30 turns? (Civ Reference)
Seems reasonable
I was once skyping from Germany with my friend who was deep in some South American jungle and my brother somewhere in an African rain forest.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
In NYC subways, my parents would make phone calls on the D-line while it’s above ground, then once it was about to enter 36 street (upbound direction), they’d be like “about to enter the tunnels, call again when have time” and sometimes they’d keep talking until the signal actually gets cut off.
The most memorable part was the manhattan bridge. They’d get the phone ready and the once they see daylight (or sometimez the night lights, if it’s 6PM), they’d press call and talk for the entire duration of the bridge crossing. Like I remember once I was with my mom and we were heading home, and the subway got the the bridge segment, and mom called home to my older brother to tell him to start cooking the rice with the rice cooker so it’d be ready when we got home.
SO NOSTALGIC
For a while now I’ve had a theory that there is a positive correlation between our emotional intelligence and our expanding ability to communicate.
I often find myself texting onboard an intercontinental flight, and in the other end is a coworker onboard a ship, so that we can plan the days ahead.
Back in 98, dad managed to reach me on board an intercoastal flight (bos to LAX) from a small sailboat heading to the bahamas. He was on a VHF and hailed a passing cruise ship. Their radio OP had i think a shortwave, and was radio buddies with some ATC guys in the Midwest. He reached out, and one of them went on the air asking if anyone in his airspace was flying BOS to LAX with an unacompanied minor. My plane responded, a stewardess came and got me, and I was able to talk to my dad for a few minutes before we went out of that tower’s VHF range (I guess)
This is so neat, thanks for sharing.
GMDSS has a system and procedure for routing phonecalls over VHF. It’s expensive as hell, and the conversation happens over open frequencies, but it works for those times when there’s an emergency. Works all over the world where there’s maritime VHF comms and the GMDSS convention is in effect.
A coworker of mine got a scare once while we were doing a seismic survey far off the coast of Brazil. A message was passed down from the bridge that he had to come up and phone home ASAP. Cases like these rarely happens unless there’s a family emergency such as death and whatnot.
Well, we were all concerned for him, but when he came out to the backdeck, he was laughing at the entire ordeal. Turned out his dad had come across a really good offer for a quad bike, and needed to know if he should order it for him.
So happy at the ending!
Even 30 years ago it was possible, but not easy, and definitely not cheap
