Submitted 3 hours ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Travelling has changed a lot.
It’s become way more accessible. Not a lot of people used to travel for leisure. But now it seems almost everyone except the poorest do it. There are a lot more businesses that cater to tourists in every city/town nowadays.
Smartphones have taken a lot of fun out of it too though. There’s almost no challenge to it anymore and thus less a sense of adventure. At least for me.
Smart phones didn’t start with those features.
…he said, oldly.
You must be very young, I’m not trying to start shit. Auto-translation became a semi-functional feature around a decade plus after smart phones existed. At first we just had very basic apps. Look funny and drink beer or see the stars from a GPS location on your phone.
It’s still not perfect but we’re getting there. Your assumption that apps magically existed and worked is adorable. Progress takes time.
Oh lol I just remembered the first smartphone was invented in like 2007 (as in, actual mass market product, not just prototypes), I had my first in 2015, so probably warped worldview lol. Like my parent were still using flip phones in early 2010s and this was also around the time when I first had internet access (didn’t have internet in my neighborhood in my previous country).
I always forget and thought smartphones were invented in like 2013 or something, since that’s the first time I see one, my aunt had one that I just played with during family gatherings. Pretty sure I remember Google Translate to be an app already.
But I mean like smartphones paved the way for these tools to exist ubiquitiously, not as in these tools immediately existed upon the invention of smartphones, know what I sayin’?
I once missed a call from my mother on my cell phone because it was getting late…
I got in trouble due to the fact I didn’t call her back.
The phone didn’t have caller ID on it… so I had no idea who had called. All it said one 1 missed call.
Cell phone tech has definitely been a process.
If you’re going to end your sentences with “lol” you don’t also need to say that you’re Gen Z. One or the other will do. 😏
I agree your original point stands, regardless of the timescales involved.
The invention of the smart phone did make international travel less intimidating, even if some of the functions took a while to appear.
Smartphones are much older than that. Symbian Series 60 had a substantial install base long before the iPhone. The N-Gage was a smart phone, for example, so we’re not just talking high end stuff.
The iPhone was released in 2007, and the Google Translate app for iOS and Android had the feature to point the phone’s camera at text to auto-translate it around 2010.
Wikipedia has google translate (2006) pre-dating android (2008) by 2 years. Iphone was 2007. It has improved significantly since, but it was pretty good even then. Adequate enough to communicate with foreign language speakers. I used to use it to email a japanese penpal, and while it may not have been perfect, it was understandable even then.
I find this the weirdest part of reading old travel accounts, like from the 16th century or something. When travel really was a completely different beast. They never talk about getting lost or language barriers as being the big problems. The biggest problem is always getting sick or accidents.
And looking at my own life and traveling before smart or even mobile phones existed. I feel exactly the same. I always knew where I had to go, even if I had to search for it. And I was always able to get around and buy things without speaking a word. Just gestures and an attempt at learning a few simple words.
But I always had something to fall back on. A landline. A travel agency. A random person that shared a language. I always was curious how travel went before those things existed. And now to see a next generation being curious about how travel was before another thing to fall back on.
The thing to fall back on just gets more and more competent. From having to use a post system that took weeks to get an answer back. To being able to call anyone anywhere anytime. I think every step has made travel easier, less intimidating, and cheaper.
Oh, man, you have no idea how much fun it was to get lost in a city where you couldn’t speak the language or read the signs.
I had fun being (figuratively) feeling lost in school and didn’t speak English, and the American-Born Chinese classmates barely spoke Cantonese and I kinda feel like they felt annoyed that they had to translate for me (just my perception of what they thought of me… maybe it’s just me being introverted). And I’m just in this classroom… and this teacher is talking… and idk what the fuck is happening… I’m halfway cross the world from my spawnpoint and like… everything is giberish.
I was 2010 and I don’t think teachers had Google Translate yet.
So yea I know the “fun” xD.
I also remember just exploring NYC via traveling using the subway system… like we’d visit various places… just randomly decide to go to Bronx one time, to Queens, Flushing, go to Coney Island Beach, just going to the F and Q trains just like go sightseeing lol, like look outside the window of the train (for the segments its abobe ground), like this is a city with so many people, but its only me and my mother in this little bubble because we barely spoke English for the first few years, and they didn’t have smartphones all this time… eventually I did learn English and so I kinda became my parent’s go-to translator lol.
Such memorable times, Iiked that version of my mother… I think she just got so fed up with me when I got older, I got less adorable and more annoying… 🙃
Not just international travel but travel in general.
And if it is only going to the next big town by bike, knowing that you could phone someone and just tell him exactly where you are.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 25 minutes ago
People are talking about how smartphones didn’t have those features at first, but I just carried around a 2 language dictionary when I was traveling before translation apps were a thing. I’m not sure if they’re exactly the same everywhere, but I also always found reading an atlas/map to transfer pretty easily from one country to another (across North America and Europe, so there could be much greater variation in the world than I saw).
It sounds harder and it was, but only a little. You already knew how to read maps and at least you didn’t have to worry about a battery.