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What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

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Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#11

Post by coldtea »

increment_i wrote: post #7
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Its funny how many 90's sitcom episodes were based on this exact premise - the uncertainty of someone's location, not being able to contact them, etc. It was a major problem back in the day.

A major problem it wasn't. We could not care less about it. If anything, it was just how things were. We tool it for granted, and we didn't have much difficulty with it.

A major movie/sitcom trope, yes.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#12

Post by jhbadger »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #3
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

It's interesting watching old sitcoms with episodes centered around that very issue. The trying to find a phone, the waiting, the misunderstandings. They all seem...odd now.

Or horror movies -- the killer has cut the phone lines! We can't call the police!

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#13

Post by okket »

jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Phones are important but without the internet they are just phones. Even with GPS, you would have to carry the whole world (or a significant amount of it where you live) as a map within your phone. Early pre-"Smart Phone" PDAs did exactly that (with external GPS receiver).

Information wise, Google changed everything. There was a before, where you the information was there, but you couldn't find it and an after, where almost every information you want is easily reachable.

Wikipedia is also an important milestone, but without proper search (just compare the internal search to Google) it would be a fraction useful.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#14

Post by rayiner »

okket wrote: post #13
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Phones are important but without the internet they are just phones. Even with GPS, you would have to carry the whole world (or a significant amount of it where you live) as a map within your phone. Early pre-"Smart Phone" PDAs did exactly that (with external GPS receiver). Information wise, Google changed everything. There was a before, where you the information was there, but you couldn't find it and an after, where…

That's kind of like saying phones are important, but without electricity they'd just be aluminum bricks.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#15

Post by jpatokal »

tinco wrote: post #9
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

That might feel a little different, and surely is convenient and in some cases even essential. I feel the difference in penetration is just because it's easier to provide mobile phone access than it is to provide broadband/wired connection. Of the people that don't have internet, I bet they don't have landlines or broadband TV either. Mobile phones are just incomparable to the advances the internet has brought. The i…

I had access to the Internet long before I got a mobile phone, and it was fascinating, but it didn't rock my world in the same way. This was the Internet before HTTP, browsers and search engines: email was store-and-forward via UUCP (look it up), files were stored in FTP, indexing was via Gopher, and access to it all was via pay-per-minute long distance dial up to girlfriend's mom's account at a VAX box at a university using, erm, borrowed credentials. Using the trusty old card index at the local library was both faster and had much higher bandwidth, and things only really started to change when Mosaic and Alta Vista arrived on the scene.

I agree that smartphones are another revolution of comparable magnitude, but that started less than ten years ago: we don't even have a first fully-grown up post-smartphone generation yet.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#16

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #14
okket wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones are important but without the internet they are just phones. Even with GPS, you would have to carry the whole world (or a significant amount of it where you live) as a map within your phone. Early pre-"Smart Phone" PDAs did exactly that (with external GPS receiver). Information wise, Google changed everything. There was a before, where you the information was there, but you couldn't find it and an after, where…

That's kind of like saying phones are important, but without electricity they'd just be aluminum bricks.

[deleted]

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#17

Post by tgarma1234 »

increment_i wrote: post #7
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Its funny how many 90's sitcom episodes were based on this exact premise - the uncertainty of someone's location, not being able to contact them, etc. It was a major problem back in the day.

I definitely remember using the phone at the bar I used to hang out at to call home to check my messages on my answering machine to find out where everyone else was planning to be. Or just walking around to familiar places to see if anyone was around. Life was a ton better living that way honestly. People were certainly more real. Now whenever I am around people I find they are compulsively checking their phones for messages and barely present in the moment at all. It's like... now everyone is always somewhere else. Another weird thing about cell phones is that in the pre-cell phone pre-internet era people did not take very many pictures of themselves and taking pictures at a party was kind of a special thing but certainly not the focus of everyone's activity all the time the way it seems to be now. I think it was more fun to just take pictures every once in a while and then have that interesting experience of getting film developed to find out how the pictures turned out. Memories stuck more then.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#18

Post by ams6110 »

okket wrote: post #13
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Phones are important but without the internet they are just phones. Even with GPS, you would have to carry the whole world (or a significant amount of it where you live) as a map within your phone. Early pre-"Smart Phone" PDAs did exactly that (with external GPS receiver). Information wise, Google changed everything. There was a before, where you the information was there, but you couldn't find it and an after, where…

I do exactly that. My phone has no data plan. I download the local area in Google Maps app when I'm on wifi, then I can use it for navigation without a data connection.

I personally do not find the cost of a data plan to be worth it. For anything urgent there's SMS or voice calls. Everything else can wait until I can get on wifi, which is really not much of a hurdle, any hotel lobby, coffee shop, etc. will have it.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#19

Post by mathgeek »

collyw wrote: post #5
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

People used to turn up on time a lot more often in those days.

This observation is anecdotal, IMHO. I very clearly remember waiting on people to show up on time before the Internet, more often than not. There's a reason that "guy sitting on the bench waiting for his date" was a meme even before communication became easier.
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