Do you remember the time before the internet?

[Kyriakos]

The Amiga was a great computer for its time
Likely the greatest one, until PCs eventually surpassed it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I remember if you wanted funny comics and stuff you had to go to the store and pick up a Mad Magazine. Unless they were out or you couldn't afford it, then you got a Cracked Magazine.
Cracked Magazine was the number one magazine kids went to when their newsstand was out of Mad Magazine.

I had a few Mad magazines. They did a very good parody of the first Star Trek movie.

I also had the Mad Magazine board game. The object was to be the first to lose all your money. Some of the cards' instructions were crazy - you had to exchange money with other players, and physically trade chairs with them.

 

[Remorseless1]

I remember doing card punch for those big IBM computers around 1970. My dad was a research meteorologist and I was a good typist, so I helped him out at $5 a day. When you're 11, $5 was a good paycheck.

I'm old enough to remember:
- 300-pound microwave ovens
- black and white TV
- speaking of TV, only broadcast
- cars without seat belts or FM radio
- 2 burgers, small fries, small soda= less than $1 at McDonald's
- Walter Cronkite
- the Vietnam War
- when the Berlin Wall was brand new
- the Cuban missile crisis
- the Ed Sullivan show when the Beatles appeared
- you hock cigarettes on TV but not feminine hygiene products
- mini skirts and tube tops

 

[danjuno]

Nope, just a little younger than the Tim Berners-Lee internet. But I sure as hell remember the pre-mobile internet. God, smartphones ruined this place.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yes. Probably on the whole we were better off, but there's no getting the toothpaste back in those tubes.

The big thing for me is access to information. (Duh.) If a question came into your mind, you'd think, "well, I'll have to remember that til the next time I'm in the library, and think what reference work I might use to find that information." Now there's scarcely any piece of information that isn't instantly available.

I think 1990-1 was when I started using it a little, so I had 25 years of life before it. I'm not quite as old as Remorseless, but remember a lot of the same things.

 

[Ajidica]

Nope, I don't remember a time before the internet (I'm 30) but I also know my situation is a bit unique. My dad worked in computer networking so he took the old computer stuff from work to test networking stuff at home, and my mom worked from home. So I've had my own computer as long as I can remember, and one of my earliest memories is the Netscape Navigator N symbol swooshing when a page was loading.

Considering how I basically grew up on the internet (Neopets, Runescape, CFC, Youtube) I'm surprised I turned out as normal as I did haha.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nope, I don't remember a time before the internet (I'm 30) but I also know my situation is a bit unique. My dad worked in computer networking so he took the old computer stuff from work to test networking stuff at home, and my mom worked from home. So I've had my own computer as long as I can remember, and one of my earliest memories is the Netscape Navigator N symbol swooshing when a page was loading.

Considering how I basically grew up on the internet (Neopets, Runescape, CFC, Youtube) I'm surprised I turned out as normal as I did haha.

People who are into gaming, science fiction, and SCA are the normal ones.

 

[H4run]

I definitely remember. Good times, hanging out a lot outside with kids because neighborhood still relatively safe peoples were still trusting each other, I went from school and came back to home sometimes till 6pm and no one worried about me. Playing lots of bicycle, roller blade, snes with that fat tv, reading comics, had a crush with a girl for the first time and called her house I still remember her phone number till now (I was in 6th grade). At that time also watching movies, playing games, listening to music were activity that you do with others, not alone, even though I love rpg games I always wish that the game able to be played multiplayer than single player, hence why I appreciate "Secret of Mana" a lot.

Yes I was bullied, but it's by a kid who is 1 year older than me because he didn't pass a grade and he beat up and bullied everyone and we all trying to be in his good side, and from this experience also I learn to ignore my fear a bit and stand up for myself later.

But the things that I love the most is, when internet is there but scarce, we need to use dial-up phone to connect to internet, going to yahoo chat and MIRC, and we spent most of our times with friends. During those times I like peoples more, and feel more motivated to went out, now if someone ask me to go out I need to drag myself because I'm too lazy to get separated from my comfort perhaps it is an age factor, but man 90s and early 2000s were like dream, I would like to repeat it, the only thing that I lost if I repeat the experience is I haven't meet my wife at that time, the rest is just sweet memories, more breathing and living environment than this current alienation era, I was a kid also and the world was relatively at peace.

 

[Narz]

I remember dial up and had an hour a day online cause it cost phone bill $. I remember the dichotomy between my computers native existence and the wide world of online (mostly chat rooms and email and ability to download shareware and freeware games).

Now there is no peaceful "alone" for kids on their computer unless they deliberately unplug the router

 

[Akka]

I certainly remember it. I mean, I was in late highschool when Internet became a thing that was even barely known to people outside academic circles, and was 17 or 18 the first time I was exposed to it.
And I was already a recluse spending his time in his room, be it gaming books when I was younger, to NES and then Amiga later (still have both in working conditions, in fact, though the Amiga diskettes are becoming a bit capricious by now and the NES is only able to output two of the three RGB colour on-screen). Internet didn't change my habits too much

 

[Kyriakos]

First time I logged in was shortly before the final year of highschool (16-17). Back then, of course, the internet was nothing like now, dominated by Yahoo/Lycos and with people using mIrc.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm just old enough to remember Going on the Computer as an event

In my first year at secondary school (early 90s), we had one hour of IT per fortnight. Even four years later, I think we had just one or two sessions per week.

 

[H4run]

I remember dial up and had an hour a day online cause it cost phone bill $. I remember the dichotomy between my computers native existence and the wide world of online (mostly chat rooms and email and ability to download shareware and freeware games).

Now there is no peaceful "alone" for kids on their computer unless they deliberately unplug the router

Was it expensive at your part of the world, too? It was here. When I was in second grade high school, I got hooked on an online game. I used my hard-earned savings to help my father pay the phone bills, and I couldn't believe how fast it drained my money.

But here's the problem I've realized (and feel free to disagree, this is just my perspective): many activities you now do alone were once social experiences with friends. Binge-watching Netflix replaced watching DVDs at your friend's place. Earphones and music streaming isolate you, while in the past, you might listen to your favorite album with friends in a car or on a boombox. Gaming before fast internet meant LAN parties or console multiplayer sessions. Of course, there was always space for individual enjoyment, but so many things were communal.

I think this shift happened around 2010. That's when I noticed that sometimes, even when hanging out, my friends and I would be silent, staring at our phones. I even said at the time, "These phones bring distant people closer but push away those right next to you." From there, it's been a slippery slope to where we are now.

 

[Kyriakos]

In my first year at secondary school (early 90s), we had one hour of IT per fortnight. Even four years later, I think we had just one or two sessions per week.

We had computer class in elementary school
Not that we learned anything there, but it was my first contact with a computer.

 

[Arakhor]

We had a computer in primary school, which we occasionally used, but no scheduled lessons.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But here's the problem I've realized (and feel free to disagree, this is just my perspective): many activities you now do alone were once social experiences with friends. Binge-watching Netflix replaced watching DVDs at your friend's place. Earphones and music streaming isolate you, while in the past, you might listen to your favorite album with friends in a car or on a boombox. Gaming before fast internet meant LAN parties or console multiplayer sessions. Of course, there was always space for individual enjoyment, but so many things were communal.

I think this shift happened around 2010. That's when I noticed that sometimes, even when hanging out, my friends and I would be silent, staring at our phones. I even said at the time, "These phones bring distant people closer but push away those right next to you." From there, it's been a slippery slope to where we are now.

DVDs? We had our Star Trek meetings at my place a lot of the time because I had an extensive VHS collection of episodes I taped every week. I hosted the first annual barbecue we had, and that was the first time we played Star Trek Jeopardy! (no fancy buzzers to ring in with; we used Tupperware and wooden spoons and I had someone watching everyone to make sure who "rang" in first).

Then we moved the meetings and barbecues to other members' places, and then got into D&D. So gaming for us meant actual gaming - either a roomful of people playing D&D or playing board games (we were partial to the Mayfair rail games like Empire Builder or Eurorails, or occasionally the other gamers in the local shire would get together and we'd play the original Civilization board game that predates the computer game).

 

[Akka]

First time I logged in was shortly before the final year of highschool (16-17). Back then, of course, the internet was nothing like now, dominated by Yahoo/Lycos and with people using mIrc.

Remind me of the clustercrap that were early search engines. Had to use several of them in a row each time, as they would all have different results, most of them irrelevant or porn (whatever the keyword, it would ALWAYS return lots of porn sites, could have made a drinking game out of it).
Still remember how Google was basically the Savior when it appeared at the time due to fixing that.
And still remember ICQ.

Was it expensive at your part of the world, too? It was here. When I was in second grade high school, I got hooked on an online game. I used my hard-earned savings to help my father pay the phone bills, and I couldn't believe how fast it drained my money.

My first long-term experience with the Internet was me making a deal with my parent about it. Had to log in during the night due to the price being -65 % at night hours, so I told them that I would be a night owl during the summer holidays, on the conditions that I would pay for the cost with my pocket money and I would switch back to day schedule in time. They were admitedly somewhat worried (and VERY tolerant, looking back on it) about letting a teenager going in alternative mode for two months.
Cost me something like 1000 € for the summer, but I did manage to respect my part and get fresh and ready for the next school year ^^

 

[Kyriakos]

Nevermind ICQ, remember Napster? (brought down by greedy Metallica)

 

[Samson]

Remind me of the clustercrap that were early search engines. Had to use several of them in a row each time, as they would all have different results, most of them irrelevant or porn (whatever the keyword, it would ALWAYS return lots of porn sites, could have made a drinking game out of it).

You have reminded me of search lores, still hosted here. Are the days when you had to understand different search engines to find what you wanted coming back with the "enpooification" of google?

 

[Akka]

I remember its existence, but I really barely used it.
I mean, I was on dial-up at the time (I actually was pretty late to high-band Internet despite starting pretty early ; mainly used Internet to surf, which was frugal then with very basic text-based websites, or playing games like Diablo which didn't use up a lot of data), downloading a song would use most of my bandwith, making everything slow down to a crawl for a pretty long time. So I only very rarely dabbed in it.
I think I got broadband around 2001 or 2002. Kind of a eye-opening moment.

You have reminded me of search lores, still hosted here. Are the days when you had to understand different search engines to find what you wanted coming back with the "enpooification" of google?

Not yet. Google has certainly massively decreased in quality (the early days were just really impressive, always getting extremely accurate results in the first page), but it's still a FAAAAAAR cry from the abysmal amount of garbage we got at the time with other search engine.
There is a reason why Google went from "complete nobody" to "owning the market and becoming a shorthand to research" in just a couple of years.