Friends suggested to do things like volunteer their time by cleaning up the beach of stray rubbish or memorial park of any graffiti, such activity nothing to do with being a form of chastisement for delinquency but rather for the good of the community.

The volunteering was self-initiated. There seemed to be more time.

Has the planet begun to spin faster, throwing us all off balance or something?

- I did hear the of the earth’s orbital tilt having a slight wobble to it.

What’s the give?

I remember random drives out into the countryside just because. I remember fish ‘n’ chips that didn’t cost nearly a week’s wage to feed a family of four, wrapped in butchers paper like a pass-the-parcel surprise and weighing something similar to a small dog.

Sometimes you’d get your goodies wrapped in newspaper instead.

-Nobody wanted to think about the ink mixing in with the sensational salty goodness. There were some good bits to read off it too while you ate. So handy.

There was a time too that almost once a month, somebody was hosting a home product or spa night. An excuse to get together and drink champagne and indulge whilst listening to the commercial reel of why something was needed - a small tub to hold sliced tomato or a delicate facial cleanser that had the upper hand on what you were already using, things that had not been on your to-get-list earlier the same day.

But it was great. We loved it. We looked forward to it and used a landline telephone to stay connected and even talk about it later.

Movie marathons.

The ones that started at 11.00 pm and finished around 4.00 am.

Three movies for approx. $18.50 AUD.

Tedious. Nauseating even, from how tired they left you, but so exciting.

Attendees would bring their sleeping pillows, duvets and themselves adorned in Disney character slippers or furry monster feet loafers among the general moccasin goers, appearing more ready to sleep in their jim-jams then anything else, and by the third movie this was mostly the case.

There’d be billiards or pool, darts or bowling. The atmosphere was different. The music as well. AI hadn’t been spawned yet and wasn’t lurking in a corner.

This kind of warm recollection of what has past is how it goes for every generation.

There is a looking back and appreciating something simpler. Because eventually that’s what any of us ever want.

Peace and sameness in what we enjoy.

Computers used to stand on desks like squarish marshmallows pinched a bit at one end. On a shiny black or green screen, the prompts showed up with a blinking cursor.

If you typed in, ‘How are you?’ there was no reply that popped up on the screen that had the keyboard user questioning if it came from a real person or soul inside the marshmallow.

It was just something like, ‘I do not know “How are you?’’’ as in the command was not recognized.

The only thing that suggested there might have been a sleeping soul was the use of the term, ‘I’ when the machine responded.

‘I’ was me and ‘I’ was also it, though it continually proved ignorant to the concept.

‘You are you,’ I typed in one day after this very scenario on the clicky high rise buttoned keypad.

- Those buttons had a lovely professional sound to them that I loved.

‘I do not know, “You are you.’'’ There were no such things as self-learning capabilities in machines. No presence, no remembrance of the one yearning for what didn’t exist yet.

-Why was that even the case?

In time we would be not only speaking to computers, but they were destined to respond efficiently, realistically, emotionally, so that we who are real could succumb to their talents. The inordinate imitating humans so well that the line becomes remarkably blurred.

If somebody had come into the room back then with what we know about AI today and just how it was to impact, it might have been difficult to believe let alone relate to. We had to literally experience it to know.

The internet itself has changed dramatically.

It once was the fast and convenient way to gain information.

Years on and the internet is a go to source for shopping online in the way of everything!

Shopping is made so easy we consistently spend more money then we often plan to.

Beforehand, you tried to save up. You appreciated what you had worked for.

It was a trip out to go to the shops to get what was on the list in person.

Wasted gifts and other unnecessary orders online accumulate to tons of landfill each year. Heads hang down toward the pavement when walking rather then admiring natures gifts. Playing online games with strangers who aren’t in the same room and donating to charity services without physically being present are normal.

Despite the wonderful convenience of this, what we used to enjoy as far as in person get-togethers is a memory many yearn for because it felt real. It nourished the need to genuinely connect by way of eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice, body stance and hand movements, things that even over gateways like Zoom chat and WhatsApp we lose.

Interactions were about in person, face-to-face time (not video call facetime) and word of mouth., which in itself shows the greater level of general trust that neighbors or people living on the same block had for each other. Hence, block parties.

Kids would play in the street, cricket, bikes, sing and play hopscotch. They’d blow bubbles from a bubble solution, kick a football, rollerblade or skate, twirl hoops on hips and do handstands.

Parents would stroll about easily outside on the sidewalk catching up, sharing a cup of coffee or lemonade. There was soccer, trampolines and slippery slide mats in the front yards. Skateboarders scooted without helmets.

Today you might hear a group of teenagers gathered in a cluster around 2 or 3 am speaking so loudly the dead could wake and conversing about subjects that back in the day you were expelled from school for and certainly did not get to volunteer for community service over if you insisted on speaking it.

You were forced to work as payment back for disrupting the peace.

It was language littering. Not unlike the monetary fine for dumping physical garbage rather then disposing of it properly into a ‘Life Be in It’' marked rubbish bin.

There were still certain standards. It was nice. Basic understandings of what it meant to be a positive contributing citizen and a part of life, not a hater of it.

Not to say foul language was never uttered, it was, but it was more conservative.

There was greater respect in the classroom so ‘language’ found its way to the bottom of desks and chairs beside the globs of chewing gum and chewed salivated clumps of dried paper. Those clumps were sometimes found mysteriously on blackboards and the classroom roof, windows too. Then of course at the back of cubicle toilet doors.

If a teacher discovered a swear word scrawled on a student’s workbook, they’d get detention or had to write 150 lines spelling out, ‘I will not deface my schoolbooks.’

People lived more in the moment. They weren’t just thinking about moments of possibility and documenting that into a computer.

You researched, took notes.

School assignments were done like that and because information was more difficult to access without your public library, learning along the way felt more constructive. It stayed with you, took hard work for an outcome.

It taught resilience, perseverance and a love of learning in the long run. Not so today.

Of course, even now there are excellent students, but the overall picture of what learning used to be, has drastically changed.

Secondary students don’t seem to know how to think independently, they may lack the ability to read and write well and that’s those considered neurotypical, without a diagnosis of inherited learning challenges like ADHD.

A real lack of creativity seems evident without dependance on technology and fast data access. You can enter a physical store and ask a worker about a product they sell for instance and nobody, nobody knows a thing, let alone if they even stock it. What’s more is nobody wants to find out either. They’re just, there.

You show them their own store catalogue and expressions like, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t even know what that is.’

For crying out loud. Really. Seriously weeping. Not the fake internet watch me cry crocodile tears either, no, the literal weeping of the heart. What have we come to.

While we think of this new technologically advanced age as being in many ways advantageous, it is also a huge step away from growing healthy, creatively independent thinking minds.

I recall having an ongoing open dialogue with a friend some years back by way of an A5 notebook. I’d write on a page, sometimes just half of one, depending on the subject, of pure ‘talk’.

Then on a specific day of the week when we were to be in physical proximity, I would hand the book over so they could take their turn penning.

We had this kind of silent conversation going on without ever having to utter an actual mouthed word. It stayed professional. It didn’t get in the way. It didn’t foster unwanted attention either as it looked work related.

We both did not want to birth an idea that we were secret lovers by continuing to stand to literally chat to one another every time a work meeting was called. Not to mention that neither of us had the time. But we both did share some common interests and enjoyed the interchange so that’s how we got around it.

The meeting point was always with a host of other people. Always full on, always by the clock but never true to it.

Unbeknownst to us, for the lack of text messaging and just before it happened in 1992 [commercially 1994 - 1995] our A5 notebook was a form of it.

- Would have been easier Neil, if you’d sent the first ever text message earlier, albeit you were only about 8 yrs old when the idea for it first popped into Hillebrand’s and Ghillebaert’s heads and was developed in 1985. You’re forgiven. Not to mention we could have used email. We didn’t because the A5 was more creatively fun.

We could have used direct phone calls too but both of us lived in shared accommodation with the phone account in another’s name. We wanted, simple.

Physical letters by post travelled through somebody else’s fingers. We loved our professional, almost robotic relationship. Perhaps like A.I in some ways today.

Time meant I would go out walking at 9 pm in the evening warmth, listen to the sound of crickets and the occasional moth flutter past. Peer up at bug infested street lamps and smell the night scents from the different gardens with flowering plants.

People could do this.

Take their contemplative evening strolls and sit alone for a bit in a random place just because. It wasn’t weird. Nobody was texting, ‘Where are you?’ Nobody was tracking via location apps. A phone wasn’t buzzing or ringing an interruption. No smartwatch either. No announcement that 20,000 steps had been reached with little streamers for achievement across the clock face.

Communication used to be more scheduled, not so instant.

It took advanced planning, creating letters and then waiting for weeks sometimes before a reply came.

Can you recall a time when you went to enjoy some real television, like watch, ‘It’s a Knockout’ or play boardgames? You were able to share real interactions with those alongside you.

Libraries, bookstores and record stores were popular.

Some have made a deliberate choice to reintroduce lost values:

I like to believe we are still tucked away somewhere behind all the digital presences.

The real souls of earth longing to tread bare feet on sand and recapture what was, what could still be if we take time to create it a little in our lives.

by Xavior Geis