In 1956, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock released one of his masterpieces, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” It was a film full of suspense, intrigue and not knowing what was really going on.

Seventy years after Hitchcock’s movie, we’re now “The People Who Know Too Much.” Our lives are poorer for the lack of suspense, intrigue and the not knowing that made my childhood such a delicious adventure.

Every day at about 8 a.m., an alert pops up on my phone, not only telling me what mail will be placed in my box, but with photos of said mail.

If you, like me, are older than Google (it’s true), you also remember the anticipation every morning as you waited to see what the mailman would bring. We didn’t get advance warning. What we had was a daily thrill — running to the mailbox to see what came.

It could be the model kit you ordered six to eight weeks earlier with 10 cents and six box tops. (I’m also older than both Amazon Prime and FedEx. Things simply were not shipped overnight.)

It might be a letter from your pen pal. (Yep, older than texting, too. And cell phones.)

We wrote letters with paper and pen — or sometimes crayon — in cursive, folded them into envelopes, licked postage stamps, slid our sealed letters into our mailboxes and put the red flags up on the box.

The postal carrier would pick up the letters to be delivered about two days later. That was FAST.

In not much more than a week or two, depending on if your buddy was too busy playing baseball or riding bicycles outdoors to write, you would receive a return letter in the mail. You never knew when that letter was coming. The mailbox was a daily source of suspense, intrigue, mystery — not knowing.

If you were disappointed with the results — just another bill or seed catalog — you already were wondering what letters tomorrow’s mail might bring.

You ask why didn’t we just call our friends while riding in the car or walking to the playground? Because phones didn’t fit in pockets. And the cords wouldn’t reach that far.

Telephones were big, clunky beasts with rotary dials (Google it, if you don’t know) attached to walls or desks, and tethered by wires and curly cords.

When the phone rang — THE phone, mind you; there was only one in the house — we would all race to answer it even though we had no clue who had dialed our number. Talk about dangerous!

No screens displayed names of who was calling. Answering machines hadn’t been invented yet. The only way you could find out who was calling was to ANSWER the thing.

Suspense. Intrigue. Thrills.

If it wasn’t a wrong number and it happened to be from your crush, you had to be guarded. Not only were your family members in the same room, but your neighbors might be listening in as well. Party lines were no party if you preferred privacy.

The idea of being able to squeeze a computer inside a house — much less into a telephone that slips inside your back pocket — was ludicrous.

When I was in high school, rich kids could afford those fancy new inventions called pocket calculators. We poor kids still had to rely on pencils and plenty of erasers to figure out our math homework.

When we struck out on a trip, we didn’t have GPS. We had folding paper maps which, once unfolded, obstructed the entire windshield and could never be refolded correctly. Maps became crumpled balls in the glovebox.

If you couldn’t remember the route you plotted out in your head before you got on the road, chances are, you’d get lost.

Some of the most fun I had in my younger years was when I didn’t know where I was. These days, I don’t know who lives next door to me. Back then, I pretty much knew where everyone in the county lived just from getting lost.

Now, thanks to an annoying piece of talking technology judging me from my pocket, I have instant access to maps, as well as dictionaries, encyclopedias, messages, news, shows, stores and last night’s game highlights.

There is no suspense, intrigue or mystery. Mr. Hitchcock, like your film title, we know too much.

If you have one of those pocket thingys, you can zap a message to Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com.