[arexxbifs]

I’ve lived in a world similar to that. It was called the 1990s. It wasn’t particularly expensive, it wasn’t that hard to book hotels and, amazingly, people also got invited to parties and events. Also, your headphones didn’t spy on you.

[renewiltord]

This is how you know you were wealthy. Everything was so much more expensive then. I remember even trying to get maps or a digital marker for where you were required so much money. Noise canceling headphones? Forget about it.

And if you weren't in America with money, you could barely do anything online.

Hotels, air travel? So expensive. Way cheaper now. TVs? So cheap now. And where I lived you couldn't even book your own flights at the time. You needed a travel agent. Up costs. Nightmare.

[arexxbifs]

I can assure you I'm not wealthy and never have been, other than in the sense of me living in the west (though not the US). My point is that life can be pretty damn decent without digital markers for where you are, constant air travel and a new TV every other year.

Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?

Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].

Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...