To be fair to your friends, it may be in some cases that the other person keeps texting them and it'd be rude not to reply. But you'd know better than I.

@col-klink 

I don’t even own a cell phone so the only way I could reply (other than in person) would be through e-mail or by landline phone. But of course with other people they can usually reach them by cell phone. And sometimes that is when they are having a conversation with someone else. But cell phones have often interrupted conversation and it seems they may be used too often.  Lewis probably wouldn’t have approved of people wasting too time playing games on them, but of course he lived in a different time when the technology didn’t exist.

We do know that Lewis gave a series of radio talks, which were eventually published together as Mere Christianity.

He did not, however, listen to the radio (or wireless, as it was then known). 

Lewis was an excellent speaker and teacher,  and his booming voice wouldn't even need amplification. 

No doubt he would have had something witty and derogatory to say about people glued to their mobile phones!

I wonder if Lewis would have watched the Narnia movies even once.  I don’t think that he ever watched television, although it was in existence during the last years of his life.  He loved his books too much to give his time to modern entertainment. He probably wouldn’t have wanted the Narnia books adapted for the screen, although his stepson Douglas Gresham was involved in making the books into films. I am not sure what he would have thought of Andrew Adamson, but he most likely would have discouraged his stepson from producing movies. He would have seen the screen addiction of our time as something like a drug which gets in the way of doing more important things.

I can't recall the author's name, but one man who wrote stage plays in the 40s-60s in the US actively refused to see movie versions of his plays. He signed off on filming, but wrote about mourning the end of popular theater and his concern that official recordings would discourage people from using their imaginations and infusing his work with their own creativity on stage. I feel C.S. Lewis probably would have expressed similar ideas, but without his presence, the Estate has had to take a much more conservative approach. Although I don't feel the Estate's approach is what C.S. Lewis would have wanted, I do think that their film and technology strategy is the one (mostly) best equipped to protect Lewis' vision for the books. It's a bit ironic, in its own way. 

@wren at least we have a trustworthy Artistic voice in the Estate (Doug), who mostly gets it right. He has been misled and overridden once or twice, but he has learned how to say No, and to Walk Out.

@coracle 

If The Silver Chair had been made with no regard for Lewis’ original story it would be more disappointing than no film at all.  At least now there is still a chance of making a good quality series for the small screen.  And Mr. Gresham may still be involved in the project, or perhaps someone from the C. S. Lewis estate.

@narnian78 Mr Gresham is one of the people who make up the Estate. His work is in the Artistic side. There's also someone on the Legal side, and I don't recall the rest. I think they work part time /as required. 

Considering he didn't own a telephone, I doubt he would have owned a smart phone. He probably would have some witty and insightful things to say about the whole phenomenon, but I think he would do his best not to be a prig about it.

I could see him owning a computer, though, given how useful they are for research and how emails have essentially replaced letters as a means of correspondence.

@reepicheep775 (did you mean your first sentence to be funny? I smiled at the thought of his encountering smart phones!)

I'm pretty sure there was an ordinary telephone at the house, although that may be only because in "Shadowlands", Joy is depicted getting out of bed to answer the phone when Jack rings her, but her leg breaks and she lies on the floor unable to reach it.

I can tell you that there was a typewriter at The Kilns! I think it belonged to Warnie (his brother),who did the typing for him. It was used for letters and for typing manuscripts for books.

That typewriter was returned to The Kilns when a US-based Trust bought the house and restored it to its 1940s-50s look.  It has been left with what the tour guide told us (when I visited in 2019) was the page Warnie was typing when the machine broke down, and it was never repaired. 

@coracle 

I think I read somewhere that Lewis never learned to type.  Somehow he doesn’t seem like the type of person who worked in an office or as a journalist for a newspaper. It was the same with other modern inventions.  Lewis did not have much interest in driving cars so I guess he was dependent on other people for transportation.  That would seem unusual today, but at that time more people in Britain and Europe may never have learned to drive.  Here in America we are almost addicted to automobiles, and technology with lots of money has become a status symbol.  I think Lewis would not have thought highly of the materialism in our country.

@reepicheep775

Posted by: @reepicheep775

Considering he didn't own a telephone, I doubt he would have owned a smart phone. He probably would have some witty and insightful things to say about the whole phenomenon, but I think he would do his best not to be a prig about it.

I could see him owning a computer, though, given how useful they are for research and how emails have essentially replaced letters as a means of correspondence.

Somehow I can’t picture him on a computer just as he apparently did not have any interest in typewriters. It seems too modern for him as it would be for Tolkien, who also disliked the modern world.  It’s like a knight using a computer in a medieval castle, which would be an anachronism.  Lewis probably would have avoided it completely.

Posted by: @coracle

I'm pretty sure there was an ordinary telephone at the house, although that may be only because in "Shadowlands", Joy is depicted getting out of bed to answer the phone when Jack rings her, but her leg breaks and she lies on the floor unable to reach it.

I'm guessing that's artistic licence for the film — Joy did break her leg while going to answer the phone in real life, but going by the biographies I've read, it wasn't Jack ringing her, but another friend (who realised something was wrong and sent for help, and that's how it was discovered that Joy had cancer that had spread to her bones). I've visited The Kilns too, but can't remember if there was a telephone there!

I suppose we can only speculate, really, what Lewis would have thought of computers and smartphones and the various other modern technologies we have now. Of course, if he were still alive he'd be 124 later this year!! Maybe if he'd been born several decades later than he was, he might have been less conservative about technology, having grown up with more of it.

Posted by: @narnian78

Lewis did not have much interest in driving cars so I guess he was dependent on other people for transportation.  That would seem unusual today, but at that time more people in Britain and Europe may never have learned to drive.

I'm pretty sure I also read in one of the biographies that Lewis tried driving a car once or twice and very quickly concluded it would be better if he didn't drive any more — and his passengers were in full agreement!! And yes, certainly in Britain until about the 1950s and '60s, not that many people owned cars and it would have been pretty normal for someone like Lewis to have never learned to drive.

Posted by: @coracle

@reepicheep775 (did you mean your first sentence to be funny? I smiled at the thought of his encountering smart phones!)

 

I'm pretty sure there was an ordinary telephone at the house, although that may be only because in "Shadowlands", Joy is depicted getting out of bed to answer the phone when Jack rings her, but her leg breaks and she lies on the floor unable to reach it.

I meant my first sentence more as a matter-of-fact statement... though now that you mention it the idea of C. S. Lewis encountering smartphones is pretty funny. 😉 

Unfortunately, I'm getting my information from Douglas Gresham interviews I listened to several years ago, so I can't cite them (and have to rely on my imperfect memory of them), but I do recall Gresham mentioning that both Lewis owning a telephone and Lewis driving are two things Shadowlands got wrong.

Posted by: @Narnian78

Somehow I can’t picture him on a computer just as he apparently did not have any interest in typewriters. It seems too modern for him as it would be for Tolkien, who also disliked the modern world.  It’s like a knight using a computer in a medieval castle, which would be an anachronism.  Lewis probably would have avoided it completely.

You could be right. I could be projecting because I own a computer (and wouldn't want to be without it), but I don't own a smartphone. I've always said that the moment not owning a smartphone becomes a burden, I will get one. I think that in the 2020s, we are at that place with computers and the Internet - our lives are so intertwined with them that not having access to them would make life difficult.

Maybe that wouldn't have mattered to Lewis. Maybe he would have carried on writing hand written letters despite the rest of the world not communicating that way, but I think there may have come a point when he - probably begrudgingly - would have given in just for the practicality of it. Even if it sat in a back room unused, except when absolutely necessary. 😋 

Posted by: @Courtenay

I suppose we can only speculate, really, what Lewis would have thought of computers and smartphones and the various other modern technologies we have now. Of course, if he were still alive he'd be 124 later this year!! Maybe if he'd been born several decades later than he was, he might have been less conservative about technology, having grown up with more of it.

That's a very good point. I think a lot of people today have Lewis's attitude towards technologies that weren't around when they were growing up (e.g. the Internet, smartphones, social media depending on the age of the person). But very few people don't own telephones or television sets. His attitude in his 20s may have been different even to our modern technologies than it would have been in his 50s - or his 120s!

Humans don't live to be 124 (at least on this side of the Resurrection of the Dead) and had Lewis been born later, his different experiences would arguably lead him to becoming a different person, so the question of what Lewis would think of smartphones is almost a nonsense question.

@reepicheep775 his attitude is reflected in what Edmund says in Prince Caspian, about "being at the mercy of the telephone."

As for needing a smartphone, once my laptops get beyond 3 or 4 years old it takes up to 15 minutes to get it going, so a smartphone is handy for Internet access as well as calls and messages. 

I'm going to try find out whether The Kilns had a phone.