[dzhiurgis]

25 years ago I was in high school and pretty much everyone had an inexpensive cellphone. Where did you live where it's so unreachable?

And EPIRBs have been around for more than 50 years.

[ghaff]

When I travelled internationally in the 1990s—so maybe 30 years—I was pretty much unreachable. I’ve never had an EPIRB. And didn’t really have a routinely connected cellphone until probably 25 years ago or so when I got a Treo.

I had a cellphone earlier but it was something I used rarely.

[dzhiurgis]

Bought my first MacBook almost 20 years ago now and been almost permanently online since then (for better or worse).

Connectivity existed, esp outbound. Of course it wasn't as ubiquitous and cheap as now, but it was there. Heck Starlink is cheaper than my home fiber.

[ghaff]

Laptop connectivity was still pretty awful in the 1990s and even early 2000s. Conference WiFi was something of a joke. You were still often still using Dial-up. It’s probably in the last 20 years or so that cell and WiFi have become pretty much a utility in most cases. Which is a while but I remember when they weren’t.