technological change

ladyofastolat wrote about technological change. This was my comment:

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A couple more additions. That long-distance phone calls used to be very expensive (with costs ratcheted sharply by distance) and that the web wasn't free-text searchable until Google was added are two examples of profound changes in the usability of the world that may not come to mind under technology, but are profoundly important to an understanding of change. Others include the profound increase in the sophistication of TV series drama after VCRs came along and missing an episode no longer meant you were out of luck until summer re-runs, and the profound changes in the contents of grocery store shelves wreaked by the microwave oven.

I'd like to keep a list of other examples, though I don't have a single place in my mind for them. Ones that come to mind, at least for US use, include:
1) Social groups used to organize "phone trees" to pass news around;
2) Laser pointers existed for several years before it was generally realized they make great cat toys;
3) Coins used to be actually useful, instead of just markers for fractional values: as late as the 1970s, there were still 10- or 25-cent candy bars;
4) Self-service gas stations were essentially unknown until the mid-70s, likewise the convenience stores with them; for that matter, the self-service grocery was an invention of the early 20C;
5) Before about 1970, toll bridges in the Bay Area charged tolls in both directions, until some genius realized you could make nearly the same amount of money at half the cost by charging twice as much in only one direction;
6) Before ATMs, the only way to get money out of a bank was by being there during "banker's hours", a strange curtailment that disappeared about the same time. Banker's hours were something like 9 or 10 am to 3 or 4 pm, sometimes with an hour omitted for lunch, except on Friday when they'd stay open until 6. No weekends.
And that's not even getting into the changes related to the status of minorities and women. (Yes, newspaper help wanted ads were still segregated by sex during my own lifetime.) Any more?