INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE (via Ed Driscoll)

[T]hat got me thinking about some of the other things that today's digital generation will never experience or have to worry about thanks to the modern information revolution. Here are ten things I came up with. [...]

4) Using a payphone or racking up a big "long-distance" bill.

Most kids today have no idea what a "long-distance" call is and most of them will only see a rotary-dial telephone in a museum. Likewise, they will never likely use, or even see, a payphone or phone booth in the near future. Instead, they will all just carry phones--mini-computers, actually--in their pockets, as many of them already do. And they'll be flabbergasted by how many trees we cut down so that people could look up numbers in something called a "phone book."

5) Having to pay someone else to develop photographs.

Few kids today have ever touched film or gone to stores to have pictures developed. Digital photography has almost completely disrupted that business. By contrast, when I first visited Washington, D.C. in the mid-1980s, I was so taken with the beauty of the city that I snapped over 15 "rolls" of photos. When I got back home, I had them all developed... for over $200! Many of the prints were awful, but unlike today, there was no way to sort through them preemptively and delete the crummy ones before having them developed. Today, by contrast, my kids snap hundreds of digital photos at a time and then we later figure out which ones are worth keeping and printing out at home.

6) Driving to a store to rent a movie.

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