Life Before The Internet

[-Boomer- 10]

Life before the Internet and mobile phones gave you something to look forward too. You'd dicuss where you were going to meet next week and you looked forward to it all week or at least a few days. Now you just text or FB an hour or so before hand

[vwkittie 10]

I've had the net since being about 12 so I can't really imagine life without it.

 

Before then you just had to make do with watching really rubbish TV programmes and thinking 'I wonder why such and such.... oh well, I'll never know' instead of being able to find the answer (and don't bull**** about going to the library to look it up, no one did that!)

 

I did enjoy playing Doom, Duke Nukem, Need for Speed II, Cosmo's Comic Adventure and Lemmings on the PC though.

[poppet2 13]

You wouldn't be still working on the train, to and from work.

People wouldn't all have their heads buried in their phone constantly.

People wouldn't take their phones to bed with them and it be the first thing they check every morning.

[Native lad 10]

I've had the net since being about 12 so I can't really imagine life without it.

 

Before then you just had to make do with watching really rubbish TV programmes... (and don't bull**** about going to the library to look it up, no one did that!)

 

I don't think libraries have ever been particularly interesting, exciting or entertaining, but as the only educational resource freely available and widely accessible to all social classes, they were places where you could expand your mind, educate yourself and broaden your horizons. They offered people the opportunity to gain a snapshot of the world beyond the familiar, often drab, surroundings of their immediate locality, and gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the world beyond our shores, much like the internet permits us to do now.

 

Today, libraries are poorly stocked with academic material, and are more geared toward arts and entertainment, primarily targeted at children and OAPs, so they are a shadow of what they once were and of little use for academic study now.

 

I don't believe the previous posts here are looking at libraries with rose tinted spectacles; I believe that the posts are just telling it as it was: as a college or university student, or even if doing a school project, there was no alternative but to visit and use the library, unless you were well off and could afford to spend on books - if you could even find the ones you wanted, that is. It was likely that most bookshops would not have what you wanted.

 

Also, libraries provided somewhere well lit and quiet in which you could concentrate and complete your work, free of distractions.

 

As for the TV programmes, there were far fewer, but, as a percentage of overall content at the time, there were more programmes of high quality content than is the case today, in my opinion.

 

Yes, life is much better and easier today, and I dreamed of having the kind of games we have today - even the early PS games (back then you had to be quite well off to afford the few machines and games there were that were available)!

Edited April 28, 2015 by Native lad

[ukdobby 223]

I lost the net for 2 days last month,it was hell,we have built our lives around it and are lost without it.

[Bargepole23 337]

You wouldn't be still working on the train, to and from work.

People wouldn't all have their heads buried in their phone constantly.

People wouldn't take their phones to bed with them and it be the first thing they check every morning.

 

I don't do any of those...but I would imagine plenty do.

[Native lad 10]

I don't do any of those...

 

Nor me. I've never even had a telephone.

[slugger 10]

I remember the earlier days of the Internet.

 

At the time broadband was not even thought of.

 

The best you could hope for was a landline connection that had a speed of 56k (theoretical) maximum (hardware dependent), true speeds were obviously much less !

 

My earlier days of internet connection used to cost me £11 pounds per week (unlimited)., but having said that, there was nothing worse than downloading something overnight, only to find the landline had dropped my connection, and you were left with a download that wasn't to be. So so unreliable !

Edited April 27, 2015 by slugger