by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: February 11, 2010

It is amazing that, even though our current level of technology only bloomed into the levels that cause us to have such a dependency on computers during  the last twentyyears or so, most of us who lived when everything was done manually cannot seem to remember the details! To imagine what the world would be like without our level of accessibility to computers is a simple process: listen to a person who is old enough to have been there!

In the area of finances, banking was slow. It took forever for a check to clear, as the process involved snail mail or manual delivery of paper to massive centers where each and every check was handled and scrutinized. This provided a little extra time to put money into the bank before the classic college overdraft occurred. It was actually quite satisfying to get the paycheck, a physical document that represented and rewarded our hard work, as it was handed out by the boss or the secretary. Even the chore of taking the check to the bank and cashing (yes cashing!) it, meant running into neighbors and friends and catching up on the local gossip.

Of course, there was identity theft, but in the form of being able to forge a new identity without wiping out the credit rating and resources of a person or a family in hours. A person could just forge identity documents and start a new life that would last until something or someone from their past caught up with them.

How the family or personal physician managed to write notes and actually read them is a mystery that will never be solved. The process of correcting typing errors involved re-typing an entire page, series of pages, or pile of pages, as insertions would change the whole structure of the document. "White-Out" was a technological marvel, and carbon paper was a nightmare.

The phone book was often a source of amusement as, during times of childhood boredom, the odd and whacky names would be located and passed around.

Punch key cards were the bane of all clerical existence as the payroll or the monthly records update involved a foot high stack of them, often separated into many stacks which rested on desks, bookcases, and filing cabinets while the harried individuals who were responsible for herding them around to their final processing destination attempted to account for the changes, sorting, re-sorting and other horror shows.

Paying on the loan involved manual entries to the books. Lots of books had lots of manual entries made to them by diligent clerks who had beautiful handwriting that came from years of practice and repetition. Letters came and letters were sent. Mail was a major part of life, and there was very little of the third class, screaming fliers and sales announcements that we see today.

There were no little computers in everything. Phones had earpieces, cradles, dials and wires and that was it. Cars could be fixed without costing an arm and a leg. It did not take an $80.00 diagnostic just to find out what could possibly be wrong. The car would run when the radio was inoperative. Road maps were everyone's intelligence test, one in which passengers and drivers could rarely excel, since folding them to their original position is an art and a science.

The problem is that, now that we are almost completely dependent upon computers, a sudden inability to use or to access them would cause a massive disaster with very little chance of restoring society to a functioning state. The world without computers that many are imagining is a world in complete panic, disarray and social disorder.

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