• New York commuters in 1998

    From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 17 20:16:12 2025
    By photographing New York commuters in 1998, Matthew Salacuse captured
    a time when the division between home and work was sharper: many of
    his subjects are dressed in suits, travelling between these two
    worlds; none of them are peering at smartphones.

    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-everyday-dramas-of-manhattan-rush-hour

    smartphones

    Cost of data plans were thru the roof then.

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  • From Eli the Bearded@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sun May 18 22:46:58 2025
    In misc.news.internet.discuss, JAB <[email protected]d> wrote:
    By photographing New York commuters in 1998, Matthew Salacuse captured
    a time when the division between home and work was sharper: many of
    his subjects are dressed in suits, travelling between these two
    worlds; none of them are peering at smartphones.

    A device a modern person would recognize as a "smart phone" didn't
    exist in 1998. In 1998 I lived in one part of NYC and commuted weekdays
    to another part: Queens to the Financial District in Manhattan. It's
    quite possible Matthew Salacuse saw me during his photography but I
    didn't notice myself in the photos.

    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-everyday-dramas-of-manhattan-rush-hour

    Cost of data plans were thru the roof then.

    Mobile web wasn't a thing. WAP was introduced in 1999, that was a
    simplified web page format tailored for the limited power and screen
    size of cellphones back then.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol

    Before that you had only super simple things that your cellphone service provider offered. Maybe a portal to pay bills and download apps that
    worked offline, like Snake (that one was typically built in, but it's
    an example of the limits of the devices).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110

    The Nokia 6110 is a GSM mobile phone from Nokia announced on 18
    December 1997 and released in 1998. [...] It was also the first
    phone from Nokia to have the popular Snake game pre-installed.

    Wikipedia has a photo to show the input options on that phone, but
    doesn't have screen specs. The page for the Nokia 5110 claims it
    is the "same platform" as the 6110 and that has screen specs:
    "84 x 48 B/W". Eighty four by forty eight black and white pixels on a
    screen slightly narrower than 48mm wide (which is the width of the whole phone).

    ....................................................................................
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    .X..X.X...X...X.XX..X...XX......X..X..X...X......X...X.X...X.X....X...X.X..X........
    .XXXX..XXX....X.X.X.X....X..XXX.XXXX..X...X......X.....X...X.X....X...X.XXX.........
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    Actual 84 wide by 48 tall ASCII art above.

    Elijah
    ------
    not going to read a news story on that resolution

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to *@eli.users.panix.com on Sun May 18 21:01:30 2025
    On Sun, 18 May 2025 22:46:58 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

    Cost of data plans were thru the roof then.

    Mobile web wasn't a thing.

    I should have said SMS

    "After 9 and weekends, plus $.10 a text" https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fswn5gu0rqet61.jpg

    Article: https://theweek.com/articles/469869/text-message-turns-20-brief-history-sms

    Around 2000, there were cable companies with internet, but overloaded
    during primetime.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From JAB@21:1/5 to *@eli.users.panix.com on Mon May 19 21:44:54 2025
    On Sun, 18 May 2025 22:46:58 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

    It's
    quite possible Matthew Salacuse saw me during his photography but I
    didn't notice myself in the photos.

    The photographer Clayton Patterson has thousands of images, video and paraphernalia from 40 years of documenting New York City's Lower East
    Side. There are portraits of performers like RuPaul and gangs like
    Satan's Sinners Nomads. Take a look inside.

    Paywall https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/style/clayon-patterson-nyc-photography-history.html

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