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Life before the Internet
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
I found some blog post listing ways life was different before the Internet became popular.
| quote: | 1. Looking up Facts in an Encyclopedia or Dictionary
At my house growing up, we had a huge encyclopedia that came with a magnifying glass in an attached cardboard drawer. You'd grab the appropriate volume and scan with the magnifying glass until you got to the right entry. Now, it's as easy as misspelling the word in a search box and hitting "enter."
2. Using the Phonebook
Flipping through the phonebook, trying to recall names, and wishing you had the fancy phonebook with the business white pages (we didn't get ours until the late 1980's) was the basic process for any informational or commercial query that couldn't be solved without outside help.
3. The Dewey Decimal System & Library Card Files
Those huge bookcases filled with information cards dictated the structure of knowledge access. Between them and the librarians, there was no subject you couldn't research.
4. Unresolvable News & Pop Culture Queries
Who was that actor in Back to the Future that played Biff? If you didn't know his name, you'd have to wait until you could get your hands on a copy of a movie dictionary or an original VHS tape. Arguments about what year the British invaded the Falklands could go on for weeks, until access to source material could be found.
5. The Modem Connection Noise
Not really pre-Internet, but certainly something you never hear anymore - that long, ugly warbling is practically nostalgia to those of us who regularly fired up our 2800 baud dialers.
6. Unknown Values of Collectibles
Prior to eBay, anyone in the business of buying and selling goods with a solid dose of charm and charisma could make a veritable fortune buying low and selling high. Today, we just look to the web for a reliable price.
7. The Office Mailroom
Large and small offices alike once received an enormously greater quantity of business-relevant mail. I recall my Mom's small marketing business constantly had invoices and checks, legal documents and business communiques coming in and going out. Today, we barely get anything but junk mail, catalogs, and physical goods in the mail.
8. No Asynchronous Contact (except Answering Machines)
No email, no IM, no text messages and until last year, no Twitter. Communication happened in real time between people, or it took place over telephone and radio waves. The postcard and handwritten letter served as the predeccesor to even these technological leaps.
9. Charting Maps & Directions
Clear the dining room table, pull out the maps, and let's figure out the best route to Boise. Imagine all the wrong turns, poorly designed routes, and lost motorists - not that early versions of MapQuest didn't cause their own problems :)
10. Buying Airline Tickets in Person
I recall standing in line in downtown Seattle, waiting to get into the United Airlines sales office to buy plane tickets, or even driving down to the airport with my Mom to get them before a flight.
11. Newspaper Classifieds
Before the web, job hunting, scalping, and private sales were, by and large, conducted through the local papers' classified ads. Today, this loss of revenue (largely from sites like Craigslist, Backpages, and Kijiji) is dampening newspapers' ability to operate profitably offline.
12. Watching/Listening to the News for Weather, Traffic, & News
Do you remember when news, weather, and traffic weren't available on demand? Nowadays, I pull them up on my mobile device almost daily, but before 1996 or so, your only option was to turn on the news and wait until they announced it over the airwaves. I remember sitting in the car as a young boy, watching my Dad flip the stations from one to the next, hoping that someone would have a traffic report.
13. Inaccessibility of Adult Content and Knowledge
Like it or not, this age group may be one of the final generations to learn about the birds & bees from our parents (or that tough kid on the playground in 7th grade - that no one believes at first).
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/stories-...rnet-generation |
I am just old enough to have had a childhood that was mostly free of the net, so I can remember this stuff. The first time I saw porn was when some friends took me down to a sewer to show me some ratty magazines they had found there.
:stongue:
I also remember a time when hardly anybody had cell phones, so people would often be unreachable for long periods of time, especially if they were driving somewhere or of course if I didn't know where they were. Now you can just dial up someone's cell...
What do you remember about life before the net? |
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| elFreak |
| that's deep kevin arnold. |
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| Tranceporter99 |
| I think life before the internet was more fufilling, but that might just be nostalgia. |
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| PETRAN |
Haha my childhood and even the majority of my teenage years were like that! Ahh nostalgia...
Even some of the most basic stuff has changed. I remember that i had to actually memorize the phone numbers of my friends and then dial the number in that old phone OMG!
I remember that it was generally harder to find anybody!
I remember that it wasn't so easy to find-out about information! I had to rely on my school books and an old rusty Encyclopedia for everything lol.
I remember when i first started listening to music that i had to actually buy the cd! This whole procedure was something of a ritual...locating that rare quality cd album that you desperately wanted could generate waves of ecstasy! The whole procedure of ordering through phone and then going to the mail-office to pick the stuff was something of a ritual.
I remember writing a lot of stuff by hand, rather than typing it in Word.
I remember having Dos in my first computer (a Cyrus 386 dx in 33MHz lol) and that in order to navigate through the programs i had to type the orders such as "dir", "run" (if i remember) and stuff like that ha ha! I generally remember that using a computer those days wasn't easy! the internet was probably non-existent or very new.
I remember that if i wanted to see a movie i always had to go the video-store (or whatever it is called in English) and rent the VHS tape. Sometimes it was very difficult to find the new ones!
Porn was very hard to find and was often associated with frustrating adventures!!
Many other stuff...its actually weird how some basic stuff like that can change so radically yet you feel nothing has changed. The illusion of stability created by the human mind.
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| dj_alfi |
| i remember buying computer magazines with demos to games and software, ooh, and leisure suit larry! i remember finding two 5,25" disks with lsl1... omg the age verification questions were sooo hard omg |
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| PETRAN |
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_alfi
i remember buying computer magazines with demos to games and software, ooh, and leisure suit larry! i remember finding two 5,25" disks with lsl1... omg the age verification questions were sooo hard omg |
I used to buy such mags as well (nerd?) haha
Larry was an amazing adventure....Sierra ftw :haha: |
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| dj_alfi |
| oooh, and i remember having to keep track of time so i didnt miss my favorite shows.. every tuesday evening at 9 or so, for many many years i was stuck in front of the tv watching friends.. now i can just download the |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by PETRAN
I remember that i had to actually memorize the phone numbers of my friends and then dial the number in that old phone OMG! |
Ha, yeah. I hardly remember any of my friends' phone numbers now. And almost all of the numbers I have are for cell phones, hardly any land lines.
| quote: | | I remember that it was generally harder to find anybody! |
That would be so frustrating now, having to wait until someone was in one of a few locations (home, work, etc.) to contact them. But back then it was all I had, so I took it for granted... |
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| Cloudburst |
My porn consisted of selected pictures cut out from magazines or commercial leaflets or something like that. I hid them in a calendar that I hid in my desk drawer. When it was happy time, I took out my precious collection, placed all the pictures over my bed and went down town baby! Internet just blew my mind...
You never talked with your friends from home, no IM-ing or . Phone calls were 10 sec tops (Hi! Hi! Wanna come over? Ok, bye! Bye!).
Going to the record store was amazing! Such amount of music at your finger tips. Then I'd buy a record, go home and just listen to it intensely. I still prefer to listen intensely, it feels wasted otherwise. |
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| Cloudburst |
| quote: | Originally posted by dj_alfi
oooh, and i remember having to keep track of time so i didnt miss my favorite shows.. every tuesday evening at 9 or so, for many many years i was stuck in front of the tv watching friends.. now i can just download the |
Yeah, if you missed X-Files on Thursday night you wanted to end yourself.
Or MacGyver on Wednesday night. |
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| Magadansky |
| quote: | Originally posted by Cloudburst
My porn consisted of selected pictures cut out from magazines or commercial leaflets or something like that. |
Rofl, my porn was the same thing! :haha: |
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