Do read this most excellent article from Popular Science in which author Larry Smith spends 10 days sticking to technology from 1954 or earlier. It's well written and well footnoted: I love a good footnote.

I do like to say that it's 1947 in my house (and 1916 at Dan's), but really, that's just the furniture and lack of microwave oven talking. Oh, and the stingy number of electrical outlets and cubic inches of closet space. The rotary phone doesn't even work at the moment (It and a working mid-century alarm clock came into my life with CDF. Both -- well, all three -- were indeed loud. I called the time piece the "alarming clock." It shot me out of bed every time.). I replaced both a late-1960s and a mid-1970s TV in the last 5 years with brand new appliances. While I am sitting in a mid-century chair on the front porch of my 1919 house on an August-cool-snap day, I am also writing to you all on my year-old Dell notebook computer with wireless DSL access. I can live with the contradictions.