Living Worlds
A suburban house at night in 1998, a lit den window with a family computer, a teenager online.

1960–2000 · America, 1998

Dial-Up

The whole world is one phone call away.

The law of Dial-Up

The whole world is one phone call away.

America, 1998: the web has gone from curiosity to everyday life in three years. Families share one computer and one phone line, and a modem's screech means someone is online.

A teenager at a family computer with a glowing CRT monitor in a den at night.

A life in Dial-Up · composite, based on the record

A student, sixteen

She has twenty minutes online before someone needs the phone.

Meanwhile, in the same age

The electric century

A San Francisco park in summer 1967, volunteers serving free food, someone playing guitar, painted wooden houses beyond.

Free Kitchen

San Francisco, summer 1967

Neighbours on a Rio rooftop near midnight crowded around a black-and-white television showing the first steps on the Moon.

Moon Night

Rio de Janeiro, 20 July 1969

Akihabara in 1984 at dusk, electronics stacked to the pavement, glowing shop signs, shoppers and students.

Electric Town

Tokyo, 1984

A double-hulled voyaging canoe with pandanus sails on the open Pacific at dusk.

Which world will you live in?

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