My kids can't believe the Internet wasn't around when I was a kid - I'm 39. They consider it the

[Pirate Smile]

dark ages.

Each of the three (7, 9 & 11) were googling for different info - Hornet photo's, Lyrics to Christmas songs, how many Psalms are in the Bible (Religion class - they go to a Parochial school) - within a short period of time.

I mentioned that I couldn't do that when I was their age which SHOCKED them. The late 1970s and 1980's now seem like the age of horse and buggies to them.

Heh


Edit to add - They now take "Technology" in Third Grade. They learn to type and use a computer to do reports using graphics, etc. In ancient times, we didn't take typing until Sophomore year in High School.

[Posteritatis]

1. The net was around then, we just mostly didn't know about it

It wasn't until '93 or so that it took off with the public, though.

[LiberalFighter]

10. I had my first computer in 1984. A Commodore 64.

1988 or 89 I started going "online" with BBS's.

[Occulus]

77. My parents wouldn't let me get a modem for my C64

They were afraid it would run up the phone bill.

Then, along came AOL, and their fears were realized. :D

[LiberalFighter]

81. I had CompuServe

[surrealAmerican]

98. Same here.

I can still remember the awful noise that modem would make logging on.

[LiberalFighter]

104. It wasn't thatttt bad. You get the same noise when sending faxes via computer.

If you have it set to on.

[BlooInBloo]

85. Was my first too! I was too busy playing with sprites to go "onilne" though.

[damntexdem]

18. Yeah, I used Bitnet to send an email in the early 1980s.

Thought it was the greatest thing since sliced ... chocolate cake.

[Jennicut]

2. That is funny. My daughters are 3 and 4 and already know how

to use some things on the computer. My 4 year old has computers in her class at preschool! I remember the internet getting big when I was in college, in 1995.

[LoZoccolo]

3. Show them the /Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature/.

If the library still has it.

[yardwork]

15. That just caused a shiver to go up my spine. I was a history major in the dark ages.

[Pab Sungenis]

24. It was hours in the library that made me switch from history/pre-law

to broadcasting. I used to hate research. Now it's so much easier.

[ContinentalOp]

54. Hahaha, the whosit guide to what now?

That triggered some kind of lingering memory back in the dark recesses of my brain but I can't quite place it.

[madamesilverspurs]

65. Uh huh.

When I went back to school in '93 (after a 30 year hiatus), the young lady behind the help desk at the university library looked at me the way a paleontologist would view the remains of a dinosaur. This was after I'd asked her to point me toward the card catalog. She managed to interrupt her gum-popping long enough to inform me that the library now uses computers, then finished her insult by calling me "Ma'am." grrrrrrrr...

[alphafemale]

89. Yeah. That was pretty tedious. And dare I even whisper the word....

.....microfiche.

:scared:

[Shardik]

4. God, they'd think I rode in a chariot then.

But, I am still better on the computer than either my daughter or grandson (for the moment).

I started tweaking on pooters with the advent of the Commodore Vic 20 and haven't stopped since.

[rockymountaindem]

5. Well, I'm 22 and I can't believe people ever made it through school without the internet

I don't know how I'd search through journal articles without JSTOR. I can't imagine having to use the card catalog or anything like that. I remember having them in elementary school, but other than that... I mean, I went to a university with 14 million books in its library system. How would I find the ones I wanted without the internet? I'd have to know the titles before I even started looking. What a nightmare that would be.

Having no television would be one thing. I hardly watched TV in college so I can imagine living without it. Of course, my TV-free existence was predicated on my ability to use the internet to entertain myself and stay in touch with my friends. That's another thing! How would I keep in contact with my pals without the internet? I pity you people who had to live without it :P

[Muttocracy]

9. there were searchable databases updated periodically before there were computers

I was in college & grad school in the 90s and it was a fast-changing time in how information was organized.

[csziggy]

40. I majored in library science BEFORE cataloging was computerized

Graduated in 1977 with an undergraduate degree. The only job I was offered was a part-time OPS position with no benefits or leave time so I turned it down. It would have been the first time the FSU library was connected to the Library of Congress computer system for use in cataloging. Now I wish I had taken that job - it probably would have lead to a full time position and I would have been on the cutting edge of the information age.

My first year in college, we were given three entire hours of access to a mainframe computer - that included the time to punch the cards to enter our program that had to be written by hand ahead of time. The most exciting thing any student had done so far was to have the computer create a text picture of Mickey Mouse.

On the other hand when I bought my first computer in 1982 - an Apple II, not II+ or IIe - and got a modem for it, we managed to navigate via the interlibrary loan system to a library catalog in Hong Kong. Ultimately cool for those days!

[Muttocracy]

51. I meant to type "internet" instead of "computers" myself but thanks for your story

My dad used punchcards in grad school and I remember boxes of them in the basement :)

[csziggy]

68. My first student job was checking books in & out

They used punch cards for each book and our student cards were punched to be read by the library computer system. I still have that old ID card with the punched holes.

I can almost no longer remeber how crude it was to do research or keep track of things with the old computer systems, much less what it was like before the use of computers. And the internet has certainly advanced research, even if we still must go deal with the physical books or periodicals.

[LiberalFighter]

14. It really wasn't that difficult to locate material for research back then.

Card catalogs and assistance from the librarians helped a lot.

[tridim]

21. Dewey Decimal can bite me.

That system sucked.

[JVS]

28. How is it any worse than LOC?

[gollygee]

25. We also made due without photocopiers, fax machines, cell phones

I'm sometimes amazed that businesses were able to operate at all, with how dependent they now are on those new technologies.

[Pirate Smile]

36. The History Channel had a show on today about all the systems underground in NYC.

They showed this intricate system of tubes that went underground to the different office buildings to deliver papers. They stopped using it once phones became common place. It looked quite fast and effective actually.

[JVS]

26. Jstor isn't so hot there is a lot of stuff not there. In fact, a lot of research needs to be done..

off-line if one wants to be thorough. Card catalogues are also categorized by category. So, let's say you want to write a paper on, say "Racial Anti-semitism and the Public Reception of Wagner" so you look up topics: Wagner, Germany-ninteenth century society, Anti-semitism flipping thorough the cards and noting the categories and if you're lucky particular books that may be useful. One should also look through the journals of field to see if work on the topic or related topics can be done. This isn't so tough. You find the back issues of the journals and look at the table of contents for each year. Of course, one can get distracted along the way. I once ran across an essay by Leonid Brezhnev about his childhood doing this, fascinating stuff. If you've found some articles, especially recent ones, you raid their bibliographies. If in every article between 1998 and the present everyone is referring to Dr. Hodgekins' monograph on Wagner from 1922, then it is a critical work that must be examined. The whole process can be kickstarted by going to office hours and asking for any suggested readings on a topic.

[MannyGoldstein]

38. Oh, It Sucked

I still remember trudging almost a mile through the snow up the hill to the library, so I could go through a labyrinthine process of finding the book or journal I needed.

On the bright side, there was coffee and bagels at the library, and cute women to meet. Hmmm... maybe it wasn't *that* awful.

[surrealAmerican]

100. Card catalogs typically had multiple cards for the same book.

You could look things up by title, author, or subject.

[izquierdista]

6. Damn you're old!

When I was in school, computers weren't even around, you had to go to the university to find one that took up a whole room....and then feed it your deck of punch cards and get your output back the next day.

[Pirate Smile]

42. I know! LOL.

(I don't really think I'm old but it is funny.)

I remember as a kid being shocked that my parents were around - and adults - when Jim Crow was still happening (they are 65 years old now). I happened to stumble across Eyes On The Prize documentaries on TV when I was around 10 years old. I was stunned. I thought that must have happened in the previous century. They told me some stories from their own lives. Blew my mind at the time. It still kind of does re what was "acceptable" societal behavior just within the lifetimes of people still living.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

102. That is true (I lived through that too) but DAMN, you make it sound like a "uphill both ways" story.

[SarahB]

7. We had to plan way ahead to go to the library for papers.

Then type it out. Yikes! (I'm 36.)

[JVS]

32. When I amble through some sections of the library, I see doors marked "Typing Room"

How did that work? Was it like a computer lab is today or were there professional typists there?

[SarahB]

41. I never typed at the library.

Just at home with my own typewriter. My first year of college (90-91), I still had to type or go to a word processing lab which sucked too, then I was out for a few years and when I went back at 23.... voila, internets!

[RC]

50. Nope. Those were small cubicles with a bench or chair and typewriter setting on a shelf.

Strictly Do It YourSelf. And you supplied the paper.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. You should show them encyclopedias. That was my big source for info back in the day

[Starry Messenger]

11. I'm 38 and can't believe I ever lived without it.

We were without a connection at home for the past week and I really felt out of touch. When I was a kid I used to read through our World Books for fun. I love information. The internet is my favorite toy.

I teach the young, and I've had them ask me if rock and roll was invented when I was growing up! I tell them they were lucky not to be around for disco.

[OhioBlue]

45. LOL - I'm 36 and used to read World Books for fun too.

I also liked to read Newsweek at 16...

[Starry Messenger]

47. I'm glad I'm not alone!

I used to get sucked in because they had suggested articles to read at the end of entries...5 hours later you could be completely somewhere different than where you started. When James Burke started doing his "Connections" series I was an instant convert. :)

[Bozita]

56. James Burke's original "Connections" series was like a light switch for me.

Sparked my curiosity and turned me into an information junkie.

[Starry Messenger]

69. Same here.

I might have to gift myself with the series for the holidays. There are some clips on Youtube but they look kind of chopped up, which defeats the purpose.

[Oak2004]

80. As opposed to internet searches, of course,

which never result in users losing five hours of their lives engrossed in a tangent.

Now what was it that I was planning to do about five hours ago??? ;)

[Starry Messenger]

83. 'Xactly.

:blush:

[Starry Messenger]

12. dupe

[Swamp Rat]

13. We even played outside, with rocks and sticks and things, and climbed trees.

Anybody seen my Red Rider BB Gun? :D

[yardwork]

20. You'll put your eye out kid!

[Jackpine Radical]

62. A Red Ryder by Daisy. A wooden stock. When you cocked it, the lever pulled back

the plunger of an air pump with a leather gasket, which was released when you pulled the trigger, expelling the chuff of air that propelled the B-B. You had to oil the leather every once in a while or the gun would slowly lose power.

God, how many hours I spent dragging that gun around before I graduated to a .22!

[damntexdem]

16. Tell them you couldn't use the Internet much as a kid -- kept burning your hand ...

on that steam-powered PC. ;-)

[Fumesucker]

35. There is actually a science fiction subgenre of cyberpunk..

Called "steampunk" that is about Victorian era computing with Babbage engines (mechanical computers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

[Starry Messenger]

37. You gave me the excuse to post one of my favorite pictures.

:)



Working steampunk PC.

[Fumesucker]

48. Neat.. I haven't seen that before .. n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

63. Gibson, no?

[Fumesucker]

72. William Gibson sort of invented cyberpunk...

Although there were stories in a similar vein before Gibson, he kind of brought it all together.

Gibson went on to co write a book in the steampunk subgenre "The Difference Engine" but he was far from the first to do so.

The TV show "The Wild Wild West" could be considered a steampunkish effort and it came well before Gibson.

[yardwork]

17. I'm nearly ten years older than you - I just barely missed having to use a slide rule.

Calculators came in just in time.

[gkhouston]

29. I cracked my niece up last night when I told her I used to carry a slide rule in my purse. n/t

[yardwork]

33. I remember plugging those humungous TI calculators into the outlets during exams

because they wouldn't hold a charge through a two-hour exam.

[Ikonoklast]

44. We had to use a slipstick

We were told using a TI calculator was 'cheating'.

[eridani]

88. And she looked at you like you'd chipped it out of flint, right?

"Where do you lug it in, Auntie G?"

"You plug it in to your brain."

[gkhouston]

105. I didn't tell her I had a trophy for winning the slide rule category in a local math competition.

After all, she might not know I'm a geek. :silly:

[Obamanaut]

34. My daughter, who just turned 40, took my slide rule to one of her

college classes several years ago because her fellow students had never seen one.

Edited to add I don't know what the class was. She took a class or two at a time, and just got her master's.

[Ilsa]

49. Point out how the NASA engineers got by just fine with slide rulers when

you watch Apollo 13.

I used a slide rule also in high school chemistry and the advanced math classes I took. I'm 50.

[HillWilliam]

55. I'm 51. Sliderule was required in high school

but calculators were verboten. There were as big as your three-ring binder, hideously expensive and you had to plug them in.

Our high school had access to a computer at the University in Asheville, via dial-up modem. It was a teletype, 60 words a minute (that 66bps for you younguns, and I didn't mistype it!). I've poked holes in miles of paper tape and stacks of Hollerith cards. G'dde forbid you dropped a stack and you didn't put sequence numbers at the ends. My first job in the Army was data entry via punch cards.

Lord have mercy.

I love Visual Studio as compared. As much as I bitch about Microsoft (I use Ubuntu at home, won't allow Windoze in the house), I'm bloody grateful that I don't have to empty chad boxes.

If I have to explain that, y'all just wouldn't understand. :rofl:

[Canuckistanian]

78. I was there for the "big transition" from sliderule to calculator

I used a sliderule for grade 10, but when we hit grade 11 - our teachers said we all had to use calculators now.

And we all had to fork out $20 towards the cost of a a new HP calculator - with the tiny red numbers and the AC charger.

I still have my sliderule somewhere. And I could use it in an emergency.

[annabanana]

93. I would have used a calculator.. but the

damn machine kept breaking the strap on my pocketbook

[SheilaT]

75. When I saw that movie all of the young kids asked their

parents, What's that? when the engineers pulled out the slide rules.

I'm 60 and never used one in a math or science course the first time around. When I returned to school in the mid-90's and took math again, it was all calculators and it was wonderful! I'd learned to do quadratic equations the hard way, laboriously calculating using pencil and paper enough points to graph the equation. What I loved about the graphing calculator was that you could actually determine the precise Y for each and every X. And could do many more problems because you could do them so quickly, and see just what happened to the actual graph of a quadratic equation as you fiddled with the values.

[JHB]

95. Reminds me of the "Double Check" statue in NYC...

...a bronze "real life" statue from 1982, of a businessman checking his briefcase before a meeting.



It's interesting to look inside the briefcase: a clunky cassette tape recorder, a humongo calculator, plus papers and notepads (all rendered in bronze, of course). Not to mention the cut of his outfit.

Bit of a time warp.

[Roon]

111. I used to be a housekeeper for some high tech company

I don't know exactly what they did, but the Senior engineer had a slide rule in a glass case hanging on his wall that said, "In case of emergency, break glass!"

[Radical Activist]

82. That's absolutely frightening.

When I think about the limited technology they had in the 60's for the moon landing. I can't believe anyone survived the space flights. They were practically throwing rocks at the moon with a slingshot.

[yardwork]

92. No, they knew what they were doing.

A lot of remarkable buildings were constructed before computers, too.

[tridim]

19. Sometimes when I'm researching an obscure subject I think about the past..

When I couldn't find the information anywhere, let alone delivered to me in milliseconds while sitting at my desk.

[htuttle]

22. Back in the The Day, there were no cell phones

There weren't even any answering machines.
There was no caller ID.
There was no '*69'.
There were no text messages.
There was no email.

OTOH, there were no spammers.
There were no telemarketers.
There were no robo-calls.
There were only three or four -- maybe five -- television channels, and at least one or two of them were fuzzy. You had to wait until 6pm or 10pm for the news.

You always answered the phone, since it might be important.

People wrote 'letters' using a 'pen' and 'paper'.

The world seemed smaller, yet bigger and more mysterious, at the same time.

Sometimes Future Shock hits hard...

[yardwork]

31. There were telemarketers. Just as annoying.

[Pirate Smile]

46. I was my father's channel changer - before remote controls. Ohhh, the horror -no remote, no clicker!

No cable - just three channels plus PBS.

[47of74]

57. Dad wasn't that lazy

I live near Dubuque, Iowa. We had an old Sylvania console TV that got channels 2 (CBS), 7 (NBC), 9 (ABC), 12/32 (PBS), and 40 (then ABC). We live out in the country where they don't have cable. No remote so we had to manually change the TV channels but dad never enlisted us as his channel changers. Mom and Dad got a VCR in 1985 - that had a remote but that remote did not change the channels. My uncle eventually got us a better antenna that could pick up additional channels in Madison and the Quad Cities, as well as other cities when the weather was acting right. They finally got their first DirecTV in early 1999. Dad didn't like the idea at first, but one week later he was sold on it after seeing History Channel.

[Muttocracy]

52. that reminds me of a hilarious conversation about 911 at a party a while back

The host of the party (in her 60s) was talking about how they used to have a party phone line at their first house they bought. A woman in her 20s asked how 911 worked with that. She couldn't comprehend that 911 didn't exist most places until the middle of my lifetime (I'm in my 30s).

[shellgame26]

90. OTOH

I remember when calling customer service meant you actually got to talk to a real person..first time around without having to bypass a series of automated commands.

[geckosfeet]

23. Hell. I didn't use a computer until I was in collge.

[47of74]

60. I had a computer since my freshman year of high school, however...

I had a computer since my freshman year of high school. My first computer didn't have a modem at all. My second one didn't have one either when I got it, I installed a modem in 1996 and got on AOL for a while. I didn't really start using the internet until my first year at the university - which had a T1 connection - and gave everyone email addresses.

[baldguy]

27. ,

[yardwork]

30. Remember those F keys?

[Muttocracy]

53. I still use F keys all the time - F4 to repeat saves a ton of time in Word and Excel :)

[ContinentalOp]

59. Um... F keys?

Yes I use them daily. As do most people who do any serious work on a computer. :shrug:

[Berry Cool]

79. I still remember the first time I saw a commercial for a Mac

and couldn't understand how all you had to do was press that one button on the thing that was attached to it with a cord and the whole picture on the screen changed. And when you clicked it again, it changed again. I just didn't get it.

[Vickers]

39. Show 'em an album...

My kids STILL think I'm kidding when I say you can play music with one.

[DainBramaged]

43. We used tomato cans and string in the 50's

But mostly we played stickball, threw shit at girls, and fixed cars until we could drive. We had AM radio (WABC NY)black and white TV, drive-in movies, and tree forts

[shugah]

58. i know what you mean!

i'm a little bit older than you, but my youngest is 8 so i get that too.

computers, internet, cable television, mobile phones, lightweight portable music...

i feel fortunate that i have seen such incredible technological advances in my lifetime, and gratified somehow that my kids are incredulous when i try to tell them how it was when i was a kid :-)

[CreekDog]

61. you should show them what cable boxes used to look like

:rofl:

[GoesTo11]

64. How did people express ideas before Powerpoint?

As I recall, we gestured in vain with our hands.

[gkhouston]

108. Mostly because a lot of people had crappy handwriting and worse LaTex skills. n/t

[MiniMe]

66. Do they know about vinyl records? No CD's, only vinyl

[Pirate Smile]

73. Not a clue about records. How about 8 Track Tapes?

[gkhouston]

109. LOL. There are a few 8-tracks my college roommates played too often. When I

hear the songs on oldies stations today, my brain fills in the "click" where the track change used to happen.

[OwnedByFerrets]

67. The children of today will grow up never knowing what

an encyclopedia or the Dewey decimal system is. And, although I am envious, I am also very glad of it.

[csziggy]

70. Show them what Tech Support used to be like!

Medieval helpdesk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

71. I once asked my mom what it was like to be there the moment....

....Judy Garland opened the door to Oz and the entire world went into color.

[MrSlayer]

74. I was on Q-Link and BBS boards in the early 80's.

Of course neither provided the wealth of information that the WWW does but I was online back then.

[SheilaT]

76. I am inclined to think that

kids today really do not know how to do research, and too readily think that what they get from Wikipedia or a quick Google is actually adequate research. It was tedious, but not that awful to go to the library, look up stuff in various kinds of catalogs or guides to certain kinds of literature, and then access the actual magazines or journals. Yes, it is wonderful that so much of that is on-line, but have they gotten around to scanning and uploading magazines that came out before the digital age? Just because it's not on the internet may not mean it's not worthwhile and valuable information.

[BlooInBloo]

84. (shrug) It's the way of things. I consider the time before ATMs to be the dark ages...

and still don't *really* understand how people could function in that kind of primitive world.

[annabanana]

94. ATMs used to terrify me...

It seemed very risky.. I was letting someone else into my bank account besides the teller who I could keep an eye on.

[gkhouston]

107. Remember when they had a "Need more time; yes or no?" prompt? n/t

[JCMach1]

86. Dad, whats a '45'

Got that one recently... Listening to the song 'Brimful of Asha' (Norman Cook remix)

[NNN0LHI]

87. The day Bill Clinton was sworn in as president there were a total of 50 pages of data on the web

We have come a long way.

Don

[Ex Lurker]

91. I'm 47 and I have a hard time remember how I got along whithout it n/t

[Greyhound]

96. You had the internet and didn't know it. What you didn't have was the WWW.

There is a great difference and I'm surprised their technology class has made that clear.

[gkhouston]

106. True dat. I remember when gopher holes were new. n/t

[Evoman]

97. What I find exciting to think about is future technologies. In 40 years, what

sort of conveniences will we have that will make todays technology seem primitive.

"You mean, when you were a kid you had to use your HANDS to get information from the net???? Wow, your old."

[Iggo]

99. Did you tell them...

...you only had one phone, and it was anchored to the wall at your house?

They may faint dead away.

[carlyhippy]

101. I remember a time pre-internet where we had to go to the library if needed to know something

things that don't happen in school anymore

no pre-made graphics, we had to draw and color our own graphics
hand written essays in cursive (and it had better be readable and neat writing)
typing class with a real typewriter in high school
shorthand (what ever happened to shorthand? I took it for 3 years and I think I am the only person who knows how to write stuff out in shorthand)

classroom movies on big reels, no dvd back then
recess 3 times a day
nap time for primary grades

[marshall]

103. I can't believe my parents got by with just three television channels

How did they find anything worth watching without a couple of hundred cable channels?

[THUNDER HANDS]

110. they just started using computers when I was in grade school

I remember learning how to type in commands on this little triangle thing they called a turtle.

[applejuice]

112. I'm 30 and my family only got a computer (and the inernet) when I was around 17 (I think).

Many kids in my high school class didn't have computers at home. My parents invested in an Apple and we loved it! Email was fantastic and felt so cutting edge (lolz).

My kids are 5 and 3 and they find that amazing. I was telling my five year old how I couldn't just google things when I was little and we had a set of books called Encyclopedias I had to look in for information - or I even had to go to the library if it wasn't in there. He said "but what if it was late at night and the library wasn't open!?"

The idea that you couldn't have instant access to any information you wanted astounded him.