Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Mobile phones as car phones were around even in 1982. Granted, in 1982 it was an analogue system, very different from modern digital cell phones, but it only required simple extrapolation, not invention from whole cloth.
By 1992 mobile phones (as car phones) were well known. In the UK we even had a chain of shops: Carphone Warehouse.
But you're right that it wouldn't have been as glaring an omission in 1992 as it is today. But the problems with the modern characters remain.
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I think we need to remember that this book is the second in a series that was started in 1982. I don't think she wanted to change the tech of the "now" time too much between her first story, "Fire Watch", and this one so she may have been limited in what she could now portray. The technology, other than the time travel and medical, doesn't have much bearing on the plot of the book and where it could have impacted things (finding the director) it could also have been written out easily. Yes, they might have been able to communicate quicker if they had a cell phone network and/or the internet, but finding reasonable ways to disable those or otherwise explain them away would be trivial.