HERE ARE MANY wonderful things about our digital age. iPods. Skype. Sharing information and making friends with new people all over the world. Being able to contact our loved ones easily in an emergency. And, of course, e-mail.
But there are things from the pre-digital age that we didn’t really appreciate until they were under threat. Things like being uncontactable, but free, the minute you left your house. Or carefully taking photos because unless you had an endless supply of film, every image counted. Or wondering about things instead of being able to satisfy the slightest curiosity with a Google search.
We can’t stop technological progress, and generally that’s a good thing. Otherwise we’d all still be using stone tools and dying before we were 30. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to cherish the things that were big parts of most of our lives in the pre-digital age. Here are some of them.
RYAN TUBRIDY: Pencil sharpeners
It was while working on his book JFK in Irelandin the National Library that broadcaster Ryan Tubridy rediscovered his love of pencils and sharpeners.
“You’re not allowed to use ink in the library, but they have little pots of pencils that are gratis and there’s also a sharpening facility. Bringing your pencils to the sharpener was like taking the car to the petrol pump.”
Tubridy discovered there was another advantage. “You find yourself spending a lot of time going to sharpen your pencil on a sort of study break. It’s like smoking a cigarette or making a cup of tea.”
But having an excuse for a break wasn’t the only good thing about using a pencil and sharpener. “It’s a very lovely thing to sharpen a pencil,” says Tubridy. “Not only are the parings pretty and pleasurable to see, but when you put the newly-sharpened pencil to the page, one tiny scintilla of lead pops off.
“You tap the pencil, then you get writing and then you flow for approximately two or three pages. Then it’s time to assess the lead levels and decide if you’ll go into the sharpening ceremony once more, or will you keep going? As you go on, the writing gets slightly less legible, more out of focus, and it’s now a different pencil. It’s the personality of the pencil, it changes with every sweep across the page.”
Tubridy still uses pencils for Late Late Showbriefing meetings. "It feels good. I like the scratch of it and it feels industrious and old school, which I like."
And he still appreciates the charm of a good pencil sharpener.
“I don’t like the metal ones you got in school – you’d get lead all over your hands. They do have a nice industrial revolution feel, but you can succumb to modernity enough to get a good plastic one, because you’ll get a better sharpening from it.”
The Tubridy Showairs every weekday at 9am on RTÉ 2FM
CHARLIE CONNOLLY: Phone books
Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, it sometimes feels like the digital age has eroded our sense of privacy. But we shouldn’t forget that for years, most households listed their phone numbers and addresses publicly. Although they’re no longer a big part of his life, author Charlie Connelly has very fond memories of phone books.
“They were so tactile,” he says. “It was like turning the pages of an atlas, the pages almost felt wet. And there was something special about finding your dad in it – it was always your dad, not your mum, I suppose because men were generally paying the phone bills.”
The arrival of a new phone book caused excitement. “I’d get a frisson looking up my dad, just seeing our address and phone number. You knew it off by heart, of course, but there was something really satisfying about reading your own number in this book.”
Once you’d looked up your own family, you could take a look at their namesakes. “The spelling of our name is quite unusual, so I’d look down the list of Connellys and I’d wonder if they were related to us. I even thought of ringing them, but I never did.” The book offered even more entertainment. Connelly didn’t make prank calls (although friends would look up people called Bell and ask if Dingy was there), but he would sometimes look up the names of footballers. “I’d look up ‘Hales, D’ and wonder if one of them were [Charlton Athletic’s] Derek Hales, but I never had the nerve to ring him up and ask.”
Perhaps proving the surprising power of the phone book to amuse small boys, Connelly and his cousin Alex would entertain themselves by finding funny names in it. “We found a Mr D Moodoo and we thought this was the funniest thing ever. Every time I went to my cousin’s house we’d look up his name.” But little did Connelly know that one day this fantastical phonebook joke would become reality. “When I was a student I had a summer job in the local hospital, and who did I work with in the operating theatre but the very same Mr Dan Moodoo, of childhood hilarity! Of all the millions of people in the London phonebook . . .”
In fact, the two became friends and Connelly was invited to visit Moodoo’s flat. “And yes, it was the address listed in the phone book, and of course he gave me his phone number. The one from the phone book, the entry my cousin and I had laughed ourselves silly about 10 years earlier.”
Charlie Connelly's Our Man in Hiberniais published by Little Brown (£8.99/€10)
ABIGAIL RIELEY: Fountain pens
The tool of her trade that crime reporter and author Abigail Rieley values most isn’t her computer or any other modern gadget. It’s her collection of 1950s fountain pens, which she uses when attending trials. Because recording devices are not allowed in court, reporters must take their notes in shorthand; Rieley used biros until she discovered that traditionally, shorthand was done with fountain pens.
“When you use a fountain pen you use less pressure, so you write quicker,” she says. “And you can get special nibs for shorthand.” She got hold of some Esterbrook pens online, and fell in love. “They’re very pretty because they’ve got a lovely rippled celluloid casing. I’ve never seen another pen that looks like them. They look quite different from the high-end plain black and gold fountain pens. They’re colourful little things.”
They’re also practical – it’s simple to change the nibs, and replacement parts are easily available online. And Rieley doesn’t need to worry about running out of ink during a trial – she fills her four pens in advance.
Using the pens has reminded Rieley of the pleasures of writing by hand, not just shorthand but in longhand, too. She still writes her journalistic work directly on her computer. “I have to think of word counts and deadlines. But for a book or short story, I make all my notes longhand and I draft a lot of it longhand. It’s a different way of thinking. I think if your writing’s more emotional, it flows better in longhand. I think we’ll lose out on a very important part of ourselves if we completely go digital.”
When Rieley got her first journalism job, she celebrated by buying a Waterman fountain pen. “And suddenly they’re an absolutely vital part of my work equipment, which is brilliant,” she says. “It’s really nice being able to incorporate them into my life. I now look at bottles of ink as a work expense.”
Every so often, she has to clean out the pens and fill them up again. “It’s a little ritual,” she says. “It’s not the same as defragging a computer; if you do that, there’s no visible result. But it’s lovely standing at the kitchen sink on a sunny morning when the celluloid pens looks really good in the sunlight.”
Death on the Hillby Abigail Rieley is published by O'Brien, €11.99
ALAN MAHER: CB radio
In the days before social-media websites, citzens’ band or CB radio was a way of communicating with both friends and strangers around the world. But although its popularity has declined since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, CB radio is still alive and kicking. Alan Maher runs Scorpion Technologies, which sells amateur radio equipment. He first discovered the joys of CB radio 30 years ago when a schoolfriend’s father bought a set.
“I used to go around to his house when I was about 13 or 14 and we used to tal
k to people all over the place,” he recalls. He soon became hooked. “I was on it all the time. When I was 14 I started working in a pub to raise money to buy my own radio. Then at night I’d be under the bed with [the microphone] so my mother and father wouldn’t hear. The channels would be packed with people and you’d get to know people as friends – it was like an old version of Twitter or Facebook. I met my first girlfriend on the CB.”
The rise of the internet and mobile phones (as well as atmospheric changes that limited the range of CB communication; in the past, you could reach users as far away as America) has led to a decline in CB popularity, but with a background in IT, Maher isn’t anti-new technology. He just likes the straightforward nature of radio.
“With the internet you’re relying on a lot of different things – electricity, your internet service provider. But CB radios can be run from just a car battery.”
He points out that in disaster situations, with no electricity or access to communication satellites, radio is the only reliable form of communication. In ordinary life, meanwhile, CB is both practical and fun. “Once you have a radio, there are no extra costs, no phone bills. You can get a basic [set] the size of a car radio for about €120 and that’s it.”
And unlike a phone, CB allows an unlimited amount of people to talk to each other at once – which is part of the appeal. “I’m a musician and the other guys [in the band] have CBs in their cars so we can all talk to each other on the way to gigs,” says Maher. “It’s a great way to communicate, and I’ve learned so much about radio and electronics because of it.”
scorpiontechnology.ie
CAROLINE FLANAGAN: Maps
Forget sat nav – when travelling, Caroline Flanagan prefers to put her trust in a more traditional route-finding method: the good old fashioned map. “I do like gadgets, I have an e-reader and everything,” she says. “But I’ve come to trust the map more. It gives me a sense of security because everything I need to know is right there on the page in front of me. It gives me a broader scope – I’m not just relying on a small bit of screen to tell me where I am. I don’t have to worry about a signal, or anything technological going crackers. As long as you have a map, you have your route and you can get to where you need to go.”
Flanagan is a girl guide leader and says her guiding has influenced her appreciation of maps. “I learned how to read a map and follow a trail,” she says. Today’s girl guides still learn traditional map-reading skills. “Technology is great, but it’s good to show the girls the basics; if we go hillwalking you don’t know what signal you’ll get in the middle of nowhere.”
A printed map gives Flanagan a broader picture of the route. “I like being able to see the entire route, and how close I am to my destination. It makes you more aware of the road you’re taking.” She’s not averse to finding directions online. “I might use Google Maps if I’m checking an area I’m going to visit – but then I print off that section and take it with me. I just like having the piece of paper in my hand.”
ANNA CAREY: Letters
When I first encountered e-mail as a student, it seemed like a godsend. Instant communication! No waiting! What was not to love? But over the years I’ve realised that although e-mail and the internet has enriched my life in countless ways, I miss some of the things it left behind. Like letters. No e-mail, no matter how funny or charming, will ever make me laugh as much as the time when, during a student summer in Berlin, I received a very long and entertaining letter from my friend Miriam sent in a giant envelope that she had made herself out of a hideous Bon Jovi poster. I have a large box full of letters sent by friends during my teens and college years, but most of the e-mails I’ve received since are either buried in an inbox or lost forever.
And surprisingly, letters made it easier to maintain regular contact with faraway friends. There was a natural rhythm to letter correspondence – you spent time writing it, then sending it, and by the time yourfriend got it and did the same thing, enough things had happened in your life to fill your next letter. Whereas with e-mail, you mail a friend in America, she mails back that day or the next day, and then . . . what? Silence, until you realise how long it’s been since you’ve been in touch. There’s nothing stopping me writing letters now, of course – it just feels a bit silly and affected. But maybe I should just do it. My faraway friends might feel the same way and write a letter back.