And now people have told me that I need a 4k television set to be happy. What would C. S. Lewis have thought of that?  The latest technology is apparently necessary for some people to live. I wonder if people can be happy without it.  I think I now prefer things which take up less space in my home for fear that they may dominate my life. Our inventions are becoming too large.

I wonder if Lewis would have that thought that our modern world is making a god of technology. People spend so much time on their cell phones that it’s almost like they worship the technology that helped to create them. They may be breaking the first commandment or at least not giving God his rightful place,

What about transistor radios?  I wonder if Lewis would have owned one.  They were beginning to be popular here in the U. S. at the time that Lewis died in 1963.  Probably many people in the UK and Europe did not own transistor radios back then.  My guess is that Lewis used an old fashioned tube radio or a phonograph (gramophone?)  to listen to classical music.  We do know that he was fond of classical music. There are stations on the FM band here in the U. S. that play classical music which might have pleased Lewis.  But I remember reading that he wasn’t fond of hymns, which are played on religious stations. I don’t know if he willingly sang them in church. Actually, I could understand his dislike of certain hymns since some of them are too sentimental.  I like some hymns but not all of them. Lewis may have felt the same way. 🙂

If Lewis didn't have a telephone, how did people get in touch with him for lecture dates, setting down publication times and contracts, and social get-togethers, not to mention emergencies? I am scratching my head on this one  😕 

And I am sure he did travel, and so would have used engine-powered seacraft, trains, buses, and taxis. Did he ever ride in an airplane?

For comparison, he was born the same year as my grandmother. This lady was born in a small town in Poland and I doubt she'd never even SEEN a map of the world or a globe before she emigrated to the US. When she passed, in the mid-1970s, she had used a phone (extensively), TV, a car, and various radios, though she kept her old-fashioned Singer treadle sewing machine and mangle washer. She even flew by herself, at the age of 69, by jet to attend her last daughter's wedding in Hawaii.

@cobalt-jade 

As I remember the movie Shadowlands showed a telephone in the house where Lewis lived (Joy fell when she was going to answer it) so apparently he and Joy owned a telephone. But he would not let modern inventions dominate his life. He probably never owned a television set.  There were a few surviving radio broadcasts, but those are the only recordings that exist of his voice. The only films that exist are still photographs of Lewis so he very little to do with any modern technology.  For the most part he avoided it. 

@narnian78 the movie of Shadowlands also showed Lewis driving a car, if I remember rightly. But he didn't drive. 

I think there was a telephone at The Kilns, but no radio. Newspapers and the postman were the media. In later years I suspect there was a radio in the kitchen.

I'll have to look it up in the books on my shelf. 

Posted by: @cobalt-jade

If Lewis didn't have a telephone, how did people get in touch with him for lecture dates, setting down publication times and contracts, and social get-togethers, not to mention emergencies? I am scratching my head on this one  😕 

I wouldn't like to say about a telephone, since I have no idea; they may well have had one, and used it often--or not.

Most of the events you mention would've been carried out by correspondence, that is, writing letters.  A hostess wanted to have a tea party?  She'd send a boy round with a note, and her friends would reply in the same fashion.  Needed the doctor?  Same boy, same process.  Oh yes, and the doctor came to you.  The pace of life was much slower back then--the practically instant responses of today, and our impatience when such are absent might well have amused that generation.

Having read extensively on that era, and the ordinary days of the moderately well-off middle and gentry class, the feeling that comes across is one of gracious dignity and an enjoyment of the small, simple pleasures of life.  Doubtless that was not true of everyone's life at the time; nevertheless, it seems to be a quality that is somewhat lost these days. (Not that I'm knocking technology--we'd not have this forum without the Internet, for instance.)

@aileth absolutely right about sending letters.

English people mostly call mail 'the post', and it's still important there. Up to 2004 there were two deliveries a day!

Instead of a mailbox at the street edge of a home, there is a slot in the front door, usually with a flap to keep the cold and rain out. This is called a letterbox. The postman/mailman carries a bag of letters, or pushes a little trolley, along the street and goes up to each door. I understand that they used to ring the doorbell or knock on the door ! So the Lewis brothers would get letters early in the morning, and later in the morning. A letter posted at the post office  or a street postbox, would usually arrive next day, especially if it was local.

I think the movie Shadowlands probably got it right about Joy going to answer the telephone and falling. This was how they found out that she had cancer.  At least I remember reading that somewhere.  A telephone might have been seen as a necessity although Lewis did not like modern inventions very much. I don’t know if he stayed away from other inventions completely. My guess is that he probably owned a radio, but he would not have had a television set, although he may have watched someone else’s. If he did he spent as little time as possible with it. I don’t even know if watched any movies in a theater. It is kind of unfortunate that no films other than still photographs exist of him, although there are only a few recordings of his voice. Surprisingly, there are films of Tolkien speaking, and he also did not like modern inventions. His attitude toward modern technology was much like Lewis’. Lewis may not have not have wanted himself to be filmed or perhaps he didn’t have any interest in it. 

Posted by: @narnian78

I think the movie Shadowlands probably got it right about Joy going to answer the telephone and falling. This was how they found out that she had cancer.  At least I remember reading that somewhere.

That is definitely what happened in real life, that Joy went to answer the telephone and her thigh bone suddenly broke (because of the cancer) — I've read it in several biographies. But it wasn't Lewis phoning her, nor was she in his house at the time. I can't remember exactly who it was on the other end of the phone, but I believe it was a close friend of hers; I think Joy picked up the phone and then suddenly collapsed, so the caller knew something was wrong and either sent someone to help Joy or went there herself. So none of that answers the question as to whether Lewis had a telephone at The Kilns — I don't know the answer to that either. (I'm guessing, though, that once he and Joy were married and she moved in, she would have had a phone installed there if there wasn't one already!)

I am not sure if Lewis ever listened to his own broadcasts of Mere Christianity. It may be that he did not like recordings of his own voice. He apparently wanted direct communication of his ideas since the book was probably published after the radio programs were broadcast.  Technology was also used by Lewis to express his ideas in The Four Loves, but of course that series was also published in book form. I think he may have preferred the printed versions of his book over the broadcasts and recordings.

During that time period it wasn't uncommon to have weekly radio broadcasts as a kind of modern post-it-on-the-church-door spaces, though. FDR did a weekly radio broadcast as a way of having direct contact with the American people, and my understanding is that it wasn't unusual for those sorts of broadcasts to then serve as discussion points both for other commentators and for groups of listeners. So it might not have been so much that he "preferred" the written format, but that the written and audio format were for different purposes, and potentially even different audiences.