Well, how was it? I was born in 96, as for all my known existence from the glory days of AoL Dailup to DSL and U-Verse, I have always had internet. So tell me old ones, how was it (life) without the internet? How did you go about your day? How did you research things? How has it affected your social life from a day to day basis?

The only thing I really remember "old school" are pagers, windows 95/98, dailup and VHS/VCRs.

Well, from what I heard, and a strictly educational standpoint:

In a way, there was "keyboarding" classes, but that was on an item called a type writer. If you messed up, you either used white-out or you retuned it

Research was also harder for reports. You had to gather books in a library, skim through them for info, then write it into the report

Back then, gas, believe it or not, was under a dollar. People did something called "cruising" where they would get in a somewhat nice car and drive up and down the same street just chatting or looking for "fun"

Kids mostly played outside and with the neighborhood kids

That's all I know since I too always had access to the Internet. This is what my mom has told me

These are something I remember and yes I am not that old either.



1. Balancing your checkbook required waiting for your statement to come from the bank because there was no online banking access


2. Along the same lines, if you wanted money to be transferred from you’re checking to your savings account or visa-versa, you had to physically walk into the bank to do it instead of quickly logging into your online account.


3. You actually knew all of your friends in “real-life.” There weren’t “virtual” friends or people you call friends but have never met.


4. To communicate with friends and family who lived far away, you hand-wrote letters and mailed them through the Post Office calling them cost too much.


5. Google and Yahoo didn’t exist which meant researching was done with the help of books and people.


6. You received the weather forecast on TV or from the newspaper.


7. Planning a vacation meant going to see a travel agent to have them arrange the flight, tours and hotel stays.


8. You called 411 or used a phone book to look-up telephone numbers.


9. Finding out who won a sporting event that you missed meant waiting for the next day’s newspaper to arrive at your doorstep.


10. There was no way to track a package that was being delivered to you via UPS or FedEx, you simply had to be patient.


11. When you had something you wanted to sell, you ran an ad in the newspaper and hoped someone in the area would be interested because there was no eBay or Craigslist.


12. Finding out the show-times for movies at the local theater meant calling their pre-recorded message and listening through the whole thing to hear what movies were playing and at what time or just showing up at the theater and seeing what was playing or going to the drive-in.


13. To get human interaction, you went to physically visit your friends instead of chatting in forums or leaving messages on message boards.


14. Keeping an account of what was going on in your life meant writing it out on paper with a pen or pencil instead of keeping an online blog or journal.


15. Watching a home-video or sharing it with friends meant you needed a VCR; there was no YouTube or other video sharing services, or for really old ones a real to reel and yes I seen movies on this not a lot but I have.


16. Buying music required going to a physical store and purchasing a cassette tape or a CD and playing it in your Walkman or Boom-box, there was no iTunes and again for the older one’s vinyl records and then 8 tracks.


17. Talking to multiple friends at the same time required that you be in the same room, this was what life was like before instant messaging.


18. No one had heard of the terms “Identity Theft” or “Phishing”.


19. The only way to pay bills was to mail them or go to the place and pay them in person because online bill-pay wasn’t an option.


20. Finding a book at the library meant searching through the little cards in the card catalogue and not using an online system.


21. Cars killed the environment (so they say) but were a heck of a lot easier to fix (not nearly as many parts to break and no electronics).


22. A Cell (Not a Cell Phone), When I grew up if someone mentioned a “Cell” it was a jail/prison cell and you really didn’t want to go there. There were no “Cell” phones. We had the telephone and they were big, loud when they rang, and had a dial you had to spin. You put your fingertip in a wheel and spun it for each digit of the number you were dialing.


23. Fishing (Not to be confused with Phishing), this was when we would go to the lake, river, or ocean and toss a line in to try to catch a real fish that we could eat. Some people consider it a sport. Others do it for fun and recreation. Today we have Phishing where people attempt to trick you into giving up your login, passwords, and account info so they can steal and empty your accounts. Definitely not the same kind of fishing I knew when I grew up


24. There was no PS3 or xbox we only had an Atari then which we played pitfall and pong. When I was a kid I got a Nintendo and I thought that was the great’s thing in the world. Playing Excitebike and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out was great and yes I still have my regular Nintendo today and all the games that I got which is somewhere close to 40 or so and yes it still works.


25. Computers were huge and in school when we went the computer lab’s there was one computer that controlled the rest and it was ran of DOS only which I know computer today are ran off the same thing but with the invention or windows it does all the coding for you.


Do not get me wrong I like technology, but the soaring costs of these things are getting out of hand. People don’t even use something that long anymore. There is some new “thing” that comes out and people think they need to have it right now. Such a waste and a much different way of life than I remember growing up. We didn’t have much, but we were happy and had fun. A lot of people have more than they really need.


Like I mentioned I am really not that old. The way the world is changing is a bit exciting, but scary at the same time.


I am not complaining or anything, just looking back and remembering things from my childhood and early days. I would give it all up to go back and do it all over again if I could.


All you can do is accept it, embrace it, and deal with it because it isn’t going away.


If you are old enough I am sure you can think of many more. and I will not name thoes names but you know who you are.

I just realized I'm older than Death.

Death has alot covered but I remember Pen Pals, Rotary Phones, Making sure to turn the phone onto "tone" instead of "pulse". Remotes for the TV consisted of my dad calling me from my room to rotate the dial on the tv until he liked the channel. I remember when schools would bring in televisions to watch shuttle launches. Research for school would take atleast a day of just getting the books and related articles. I remember having to learn cursive along with normal printing.

I've never really understood the so called charm of doing something the "old way". I'm going to be 30 soon so I didn't exactly grow up with the internet or a lot of things we have now. Hell I didn't really use the internet until I was in high school and even then it was only in school for the most part. I really don't think it was better in any way to pick up a physical book rather than have access to thousands of books on a tablet or ebook reader. Or using a paper map instead of a GPS device. And this may anger some people but I find the postal service obsolete. It's a waste of trees to still be sending paper letters when we have email. I hope we never have to do things the old way ever again. I say bring on more tech, I'm ready to embrace it. Still waiting on flying cars, interstellar travel and a true sustainable energy source.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.

Well, I got on the internet starting in '88, long before the web so I've spent the better part of my life on the net and even longer with PC's.

To add a few things to Death's notes:

5. Google and Yahoo didn’t exist which meant researching was done with the help of books and people.
*** There were still computerized search tools, even in libraries. They would just point you to the texts instead of just displaying it to you. Also, as early as '88 there were things like Prodigy and the Encarta Encyclopedia on CD.

17. Talking to multiple friends at the same time required that you be in the same room, this was what life was like before instant messaging.
*** 3 way calling... did a LOT of that in high school.

18. No one had heard of the terms “Identity Theft” or “Phishing”.
*** Correction: Only a few people had heard of it. It definitely existed.

19. The only way to pay bills was to mail them or go to the place and pay them in person because online bill-pay wasn’t an option.
*** Some Drug Stores would offer a bill pay service for things like utility bills, etc.


24. There was no PS3 or xbox we only had an Atari then which we played pitfall and pong. When I was a kid I got a Nintendo and I thought that was the great’s thing in the world. Playing Excitebike and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out was great and yes I still have my regular Nintendo today and all the games that I got which is somewhere close to 40 or so and yes it still works.
*** I had the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Odyssey2, ColecoVision. Spent MANY hours in the early 80's on that Odyssey2 and Colecovision. :P

25. Computers were huge and in school when we went the computer lab’s there was one computer that controlled the rest and it was ran of DOS only which I know computer today are ran off the same thing but with the invention or windows it does all the coding for you.
*** Does all the coding for you? I'm out of a job! :P

Hmm write me a COBOL script to print your name, then do it again with C#. Ya it does alot of it 4 you

Lol I don't think he really meant 'does the coding for you' like that. More like you don't have to type a long command to do everything on a computer anymore.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.

[quote="[BBF"]Shahal]
Lol I don't think he really meant 'does the coding for you' like that. More like you don't have to type a long command to do everything on a computer anymore.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.
[/quote]


He is right. Before windows you would have to type c:/dir (or something like that it has been a while) to find the .exe file to run the program.

With windows it is all done for you and you just log in. All the DOS stuff is still running in the back ground but you do not have to mess with it.