100 Things We've Lost to the Internet

by Pamela Paul

Thank goodness that’s over. Why, the post-phone generation might wonder? Well, for one thing, the phone always rang at the wrong time. Phone calls could be presumptuous and intrusive, forcing you to engage without preparation.

California has the worst ratio of students to school librarians in the nation: 7,000 to 1.

Instead, all are content, each in their own world like Pixar’s postapocalyptic WALL-E vision of earthlings, stripped of musculature and humanity, reclining blobbily in automated loungers, affixed to portable screens.

If you’re the parent of a child with high-needs autism or if you lack mobility or have a rare medical condition; if you live in an isolated community or feel isolated from the people in your community—the Internet is a godsend.

Likes and hearts just don’t carry the same emotional wallop as eye-to-eye contact, deep conversation, and full-body hugs.

to pre-class shopping in the college bookstore, and to holding on to your college textbooks well into your thirties even if you never opened them again, a visual reminder of your college years. The bookshelves of the future will show no sign of students past.