alt Hacker News> I think people also forget (or don’t even know) that before mobile phones you’d often walk over to someone’s house just to knock on the door to find out if they were in or see what they were doing.
Um, we had phones before mobile phones.
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> Um, we had phones before mobile phones.
True, but back in the day one had to pay for every call, sometimes at per-minute rates: always so for long distance, and in some areas even for local calls. Quite a contrast to today's unlimited-minutes cellular plans (which likely get used little enough that the providers have no trouble offering them).
A key factor in the development of dialup BBS systems in the US was that local calls were usually at least flat-rate, with unlimited service available here and there.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand, back then I recall a number of social events revolving around local BBSes in Champaign-Urbana, and Fidonet's Net 115 in the Chicago area. All that sort of thing vaporized pretty quickly once the internet opened up.
We did, and yet people did still often just come over unannounced, to the point that it that the unannounced visit - which was common enough to be believable, but not always welcome - was a frequent plot point in various media.
It was common during my childhood for us to always have something in the cupboard - like a cake or biscuits or chocolate - that we could offer in case someone just dropped by.
It's been decades since I've cared about having anything ready for a possible surprise visitor, as while before I'd feel rude if I didn't have anything, now I'd feel they were rude for not checking in advance as now they rarely have an excuse for not doing so.