It Was Like The First Facebook

A thousand years ago when I spent the summer of ’85 wandering through Israel there was a pizza place in Jerusalem that all the anglos would hit.

A place you would go because of the bulletin board that contained countless notes and messages from friends and relatives.

It was our first social network, an early Facebook that I first blogged about in 2007.  Every month the post Who Remembers Ritchie’s Pizza gets a little traffic because of the good times and memories tied into it.

Times

My kids really don’t appreciate how different things were and how much harder it could be to physically connect with people if you were meeting somewhere.

You couldn’t just show up at the mall and say you’ll call each other when you get there. You had to make a plan or risk never connecting.

There is a certain convenience in carrying supercomputers in our pockets that we can use to connect with others.

But sometimes I miss what was because you used the phone for conversation. You made a point to really talk or at least in theory intended to.

Now you see groups of teens sitting near each other but often their heads are bent over a tiny screen and you wonder what would happen if they had no phones and had to actually talk.

• Saved: Children