Why use a cellphone when you can put your head in a fire?

[nancylebov]

Please, fanbrats, remember that when you write HP, you're not writing in our current time period. This world moves fast, and the series covers 1990-1998, so those ten to eighteen years DO make a difference. And yes, I know, if you're only fifteen, you might not remember, but it's not that hard to research, although please try to remember that part of why Hermione uses books so well is that there was no Google or Wikipedia.

And if you want, ask some old people...like, you know, in their twenties. Maybe even someone who's 28 or so, like Harry would be now. I know, breathtakingly old, but our minds haven't entirely gone yet.

Now that I think about it, the Muggle tech seemed kind of low for 1990. This is a matter of feel, I don't have specific examples in mind except that I think I was online by then and I'm not an early adopter. When would you say the books were really set?

And thinking about Hermione.... would you trade modern information tech for the ability to do magic?

By the by....I have memories of memories of when Eisenhower was president. I do remember when Kennedy (the first one) was shot.

Link thanks to metaquotes. Post title thanks to cyberninjasio.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I can't think of a single mention of computers in the Muggle world. Google and Wikipedia weren't around, but e-mail and online services were becoming common by the early nineties.

[gildedacorn.livejournal.com]

Dudley had a computer, and a Playstation which he threw out the window in a tantrum. One reason Harry wanted to be left behind on Dudley's birthday (in the first book) is so he could try out Dudley's computer while everyone was gone.

(Citations provided later if wanted, but right now the books are at home and I'm not.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Good catch.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I'd say being on the net by 1990 makes you an early adopter. I was in Israel in late 1991/early 1992 and sent letters home to my parents by emailing them to a college friend and having her print them out and snail mail them the rest of the way.

In 1990 neither AOL for DOS nor AOL for Windows had been released. I'd put the end of the early adopter era around 1993 or so, personally.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was pretty much just Prodigy and... Compuserve? something like that, it was more for corporations than the general public... at the time. Prodigy was eventually killed by AOL, but that wasn't until the mid 90's or so, if my old brain recalls correctly.

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

Yep, I was on CompuServe in 1984... with a 1200 baud modem. CompuServe's major competitor at the time was GEnie.

I also remember when most newsgroups had names starting in "net" or "mod." Indeed the only exceptions that I recall were the on-campus groups that started with the initials of the university.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I was at Cornell using talkomatic on the PLATO network to flirt with women in Connecticut in 1974.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I was on usenet with a telnet account.

I guess I was an early adopter compared to most people, but there was already a well-established culture and a lot of people when I showed up.

[avram]

Also, did the Internet spread in England at the same speed it did here?

Back it the late '90s, I was told that Europe was behind us in high-speed net access, but ahead of us in cell phones. I don't know how this generalizes to Internet and computer use in general.

[avram]

Does Hogwarts have electricity? If not, even Muggle-raised students would have a hard time doing anything useful with computers or cellphones. At least until someone figures out how to cast Rechargius Batterus.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

IIRC, a lot of Muggle tech doesn't work around magic. I could be wrong, but even the Muggle world seemed a little low tech for 1990.

[punkwalrus.livejournal.com]

The whole angle, I thought, was to make the work more timeless.

I would imagine, however, that most wizards didn't care. Think about it: manipulating magic is a philosophy as well as a power. A typical "muggle" thought would be "do owls replace e-mail?" when a wizard may ask, "why would you need e-mail?" See what I am saying? Mr. Weasley was fascinated by muggle crafts, I think, because they totally didn't make sense to him and in some ways, seemed a completely too complex and backwards way of doing anything.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I was talking about the level of tech used by muggles, not the lack of modern tech among the wizards.

I still think the wizards should embrace innovations like card catalogues and indexes. I don't think their scrolls had indexes.

[madfilkentist]

"Accio WID-DC PR 6039 .O32 H6 2002"!

(That would get you The Annotated Hobbit, which just happens to be on my desk, from the Harvard library.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If you look at the information-handling capacity implied by the Marauder's Map and still more by Rita Skeeter's pen, I think a good programmer could do some very interesting things in the wizard world.