Another job lost because of technology 👿

Comments

• solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  in the 80s you could call AAA and tell them where you’re planning to go on a road trip and they would send you a spiralbound roadmap of the route with gas stations, hotels, and construction zones highlighted

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  • Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Part of me still misses TripTiks. It was fun to go through them ahead of trips and always have that nicely printed, spiral bound book with you on the road.

    At some point in the 90s they automated TripTiks with the idea that you’d print them at home yourself. It was all the same info but the magic was gone.

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    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Nice!

      Image

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      I wonder if there is a print-on-demand service that will still make these for you. Could certainly DIY.

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    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Wonder if a day will come when they stop making road atlases:

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    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Remake it and call it TripToks

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  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My grandma actually recommended I do this last year. I was already contacting AAA about some other thing, and jokingly brought up road trips. They went, “Yeah we can help!” I was kinda adorable.

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  • rhacer@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My father was an itinerant minister. He traveled all over the country. We made great use of TripTik (I think that’s what it was called).

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• TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  GeoGuessr mfs inventing the first time machine to have this job:

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  • LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    GeoGuessr person:“ok, now which directions are the shadows pointing? Any wildflowers or birds in the area?”

    Caller: “I’m just looking for a gas station”

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    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “Just tell me what type of material is the road. Come on!”

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• LesserAbe@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How widespread was this? I grew up in the 80s/90s and pre GPS we just had a map in the car. I’ve never heard of such a hotline until seeing this post.

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  • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Maybe a call centre operated by map producers, intended more for questions about routes and conditions rather than “take the third left” kind of navigation.

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  • mycodesucks@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, it sounds like the kind of thing you could do but would pay out the butt for as a private service. Road map books and asking directions were my go-to.

    Of course, post-internet but pre-GPS there was always mapquest.

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  • Hasherm0n@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I always made sure I had Thomas guide book for any areas I went through in my car.

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• Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  But, when would you use this? Stop at a gas station, and instead of getting a map, you make a phonecall?

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  • Quill7513@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Rest area payphones. Its why most rest areas have a huge blown up atlas map these days

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    • rhacer@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, but what gorgeous country to get fucked in! When my wife PCSd from Long Island to Fort Knox, we drove through that country several times.

      She would also spend a lot of time at Fort Lee (now Gregg-Adams) and the drive from Fort Knox to Fort Lee also crossed amazing parts of WV.

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  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    everyone had maps, but they weren’t always current

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  • Jivebunny@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is actually a map of the Netherlands and I’m from there. I’m also old enough to remember a time without mobile phones. This was probably the call centre for triple AAA, in Dutch the ANWB. We had these emergency telephone poles along the highways. When stranded and without a map you could easily call aid through them with these phones, which they also knew where they were, for easy dispatching.

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    • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m also dutch, and Im pretty sure you couldn’t call for route advice from the ANWB poles. Or at least, you couldn’t in the later years, maybe it was different in the 60s.

      It does make a lot more sense these people are planners, not general navigation advisers.

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  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, payphones were at most stops. Rest areas, etc.

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  • tipicaldik@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I would think using that service to plan a route ahead of time would be optimal…

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    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what a AAA TripTik was for.

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• variants@possumpat.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  here is a cool article on a few different jobs lost with photos rarehistoricalphotos.com/jobs-that-no-longer-exis…

  my favorite is the human alarm clock and went and shot your window with a pea shooter to wake you up

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I will still do this. What does an alarm clock cost? $500? $1,000? I’ll do it for half that.

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• ace_garp@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  For a good time, call 1194.

  This graffiti was seen, around 1993, in various toilets, referencing the national talking-clock service.

  1194 == “On the third tone it will be 3:45 and 30 seconds, beep beep beeep.”

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  • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    These still exist, except it’s not a number you call, it’s a shortwave station that you tune into.

    Check out websdr.org if you don’t have your own. From there you can play with various shortwave radios from around the world. The first one on my list is my favorite cause it picks up a lot of stuff.

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    • Bgugi@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can still call wwv and wwvh.

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    • pc486@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Specifically 5, 10, and 15mhz AM. There are others, but you’ll really hear NIST WWV/WWVH if you’re in North America/Pacific.

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  • ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    555-1212 was the number where I was.

    I still use it on websites that ask for my phone number for some gods unknown reason.

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• expatriado@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  i can see this causing so marriage arguments

  you should call the hotline John

  I got this Margaret!

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• HK65@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s a map of the NL, is it not?

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  • Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    France+Iberia in the background

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  • Megabazos@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yep!

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  • NiPfi@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think so too

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• niktemadur@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Another one of life’s simple pleasures ruined by the government lizard overlords.

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• hate2bme@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I lived in Chicago from 2004 to 2007 and NYC from 2007 to 2009 and I did not have a smartphone not even sure if they were around then. There was a number you could text the cross streets you were at and the cross streets you wanted to go to and it would give you step by step directions to get there with public transportation. I used it daily.

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• Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “Hot single navigators in your area waiting for you call; – call now!!”

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• Asifall@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Just gotta find a friendly middle aged white man and you can have this service for free

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  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You carry around a universal translator, and a global atlas in your pocket. Leave me alone.

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    • BluesF@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is not the friendly middle aged man you are looking for

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• TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The irony being how much the standard quality of life has dropped compared to the people seen working in this photo. At some point, expect to be just another pest barely tolerated within the urban environment. For many homeless, that’s what they already are.

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  • abbadon420@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I disagree. It has changed and morphed. The weights have shifted, some parts have gotten better, while others have dropped. Overall, quality of life is better now than it was in 1960. Of course this is all immensely subjective and the viewpoint of a homeless person in Moskou cannot be compared to a family man working middle management in Los Angeles.

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    • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, the quality of life is certainly better not being able to afford a home with two working couples and being forced to go into debt for decades… That’s why no one ever has any beef with boomers who regurgitate things like your comment.

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• phorq@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m getting Godzilla-nervous-system vibes from the front-most map, not gonna lie…

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  • nonagonOrc@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Haha that is a new way to look at roadmaps of the Netherlands, I love it

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• helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sure we lost that particular job, but we also gained the job of driving around with a cam car collecting data. Then there’s who ever takes all those pictures and compiles them into street view. Sure its highly automated, but someone had to automate it…

  Imgine what the hunters thought when they lost their jobs to farms.

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• CircuitSpells@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This still exists, at least in Mexico

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  • superkret@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Se encuentra en méxico.”
    “Muchas gracias!”

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• yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I never ever heard of this, I don’t think it was a thing here, father always asked locals or already had a map he bought from a car magazine.

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• Hedin@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s the Netherlands.

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• son_named_bort@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wonder if they charged per minute like a lot of hot lines did back in the day.

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