Computers & Internet Life before the internet

[HappyChappy35]

Was just reading the read about what people do when the internet falls over in their house, and it got me thinking- what was everything like before the internet boom began?
I'm only 17 here and therefore unable to really remember life before the internet (well, I vaguely remember it, but would've only been about 5 or 6 when our family first got it). As the internet has altered our lives so much since the early-mid 90s, I feel intrigued, so I'm going to ask BigFooty members (more so older ones) about it.
What did people do? Was there more boredom than now? What did people rely on instead of things such as Facebook and online shopping? Is life necessarily better? etc.
Will leave it to you guys...

 

[I bleed Blue]

I was in early high school when we got the internet. Before then I used to play my Sega Mega Drive (for the win) and play alot of sports with my mates.

Not much has changed instead now I play my playstation or browse the internet instead of the sega. Still play sport and hang with mates. The access to information is crazy though with having the internet on your phone though. If I had of known how far and fast phones would come when i had my first Nokia 3315 I would not have beleived it.

 

[Meow]

Was just reading the read about what people do when the internet falls over in their house, and it got me thinking- what was everything like before the internet boom began?
I'm only 17 here and therefore unable to really remember life before the internet (well, I vaguely remember it, but would've only been about 5 or 6 when our family first got it). As the internet has altered our lives so much since the early-mid 90s, I feel intrigued, so I'm going to ask BigFooty members (more so older ones) about it.
What did people do? Was there more boredom than now? What did people rely on instead of things such as Facebook and online shopping? Is life necessarily better? etc.
Will leave it to you guys...

I was born in 1961 (makes me about 300 in internet years), and so will answer your questions....

1. No, people weren't bored. Our idea of fun as kids was playing outside all day, not playing Halo or World of Warcraft on an Xbox.
2. People relied on landline phones and face-to-face conversations instead of Facebook. As for online shopping, well you actually had to go to the shops to do your shopping.
3. In my opinion, life was better. It was much simpler with far more pleasures and freedoms than today.

Technology has come a very, very long way in my lifetime. The first time I remember using the internet was when work got it in about 1992 or 93, and not too many places in Australia had it back then. The modem was something like 8kbps and you had to get permission from the boss to use it. The only thing on it was a few websites with text and a browser called Mosaic (no Google or Yahoo). I didn't have it at home until about 13 years ago.
As a kid, we didn't even have a landline phone until I was in High School (it didn't have buttons). Didn't have a colour TV until I was about 20, and don't remember using a computer until I was in uni. I got my first home computer in 1989 (they were only just starting to become popular around then)- it ran Windows 2, and was nothing like the computers of today. Could keep going on and on but can't be bothered right now.

 

[kickazz]

In general people planned better and were more patient. And you had to send away to Canberra for pr0n.

 

[Plugger35]

People used to go outdoors during the day.

At night they would make their own fun by gathering around the piano and singing songs, playing board games and watching all the great tv shows of the day like McGyver, ALF and Punky Brewster.

They were much simpler times but they were happy times.

I still wouldn't trade it for the internet though.

 

[Ed_Gein]

My family didn't get the internet until i was about 17-18 or so in the late, late 90's. I think even then, the internet was still a bit of a luxury. But everything up until then, it was very much the traditional way of ringing people up via house phone etc and making arrangements to meet somewhere or what time you'd get to their house or when they'll pick you up as opposed to facebook and mobile phones.

When i think about it, it's does seem strange now due to the fact how much easier it is these days to keep in touch with someone.

I did have some gaming consoles throughout the 90's as well, but i didn't have the attention span to sit on them day after day, that stage of my life revolved around playing sports with mates.

 

[HappyChappy35]

In general people planned better and were more patient. And you had to send away to Canberra for pr0n.

Wow, no pr0n. Don't think I would've lasted very long.

As a kid, we didn't even have a landline phone until I was in High School (it didn't have buttons).

How on earth did you use the phone then if it had no buttons?

 

[Simple Jack]

Gaming consoles and outdoor play. There was a bit of empty land across the road from me and the kid across the road (next to the land) and I would always play footy/cricket/soccer there pretty much every day. Also riding bikes and going down to the beach a lot (lived across the road from it).

Wouldn't trade it for the internet now. Not for Facebook (don't have it)/twitter or any of that other egotistical nonsense but purely for the amazing amount of information and knowledge that can be obtained in an instant. It's an incredibly underrated (and imo the most important) part of the internet.

 

[Simple Jack]

Wow, no pr0n. Don't think I would've lasted very long.



How on earth did you use the phone then if it had no buttons?

Never seen this:

?

 

[Meow]

How on earth did you use the phone then if it had no buttons?

LOL, you used one of these. Phones with buttons didn't come along until sometime in the 80s-

My family didn't get the internet until i was about 17-18 or so in the late, late 90's. I think even then, the internet was still a bit of a luxury.

I wouldn't say it was exactly a luxury in the late 90s. In 1992/93 when my work got it it was very rare though, and I didn't really know anyone with a connection until 1994-95 or so.

In general people planned better and were more patient. And you had to send away to Canberra for pr0n.

Later on in my high school years, our principal found a stash of pr0n mags hidden in the school library. The punishment for the offenders? The cuts. Couldn't see that happening nowadays.
For a while there was actually a late night pr0n show on SBS, and there was also something called your imagination when it came to fapping.

 

[HappyChappy35]

^Ah, I've seen those phones before. Could never figure out how to use them though.

Later on in my high school years, our principal found a stash of pr0n mags hidden in the school library. The punishment for the offenders? The cuts. Couldn't see that happening nowadays.

On this, has society always been as soft as it is now? Everything nowadays seems to revolve around all this safety and political correctness bull$hit. Has there always been so much of "that is racist", "you can't say this", or "you can't do that", etc. as there is now?

 

[Ed_Gein]

I wouldn't say it was exactly a luxury in the late 90s. In 1992/93 when my work got it it was very rare though, and I didn't really know anyone with a connection until 1994-95 or so.

I guess you're right. I think perhaps quite a lot of people had the internet, but there wasn't a huge reliance on it as there is now. I mean our lives pretty much revolve around it now with online banking, facebook, shopping and downloading wasn't as extensive as it was back then. I'd love to see what sort of statistics there are for time spent on the internet for the average person is from back in the late 90's compared to now. You wonder how much further it can go.

 

[Meow]

I guess you're right. I think perhaps quite a lot of people had the internet, but there wasn't a huge reliance on it as there is now. I mean our lives pretty much revolve around it now with online banking, facebook, shopping and downloading wasn't as extensive as it was back then. I'd love to see what sort of statistics there are for time spent on the internet for the average person is from back in the late 90's compared to now. You wonder how much further it can go.

The 90s were when everything changed. Most people had a computer by the earlier part of the decade and mobile phones were becoming affordable, before the internet took off later on and the rest is history. As for how much further it can go, it'll go a long way. Today's technology will probably seem ancient in 20-30 years.

On this, has society always been as soft as it is now? Everything nowadays seems to revolve around all this safety and political correctness bull$hit. Has there always been so much of "that is racist", "you can't say this", or "you can't do that", etc. as there is now?

No, it's never been that soft. When I was a kid, coppers would give you a clip around the ear and a kick up the bum if you mucked up. Parents would do the same. At school, you'd get the cuts and/or the strap. Nowadays, it's all about counselling and all this other rubbish, and the thing is that these punishments actually brought kids into line.
I remember a time where I could go to the milk bar as a kid and buy a packet of smokes for mum, beer for dad, and some fireworks too without needing ID. Nobody wore helmets when riding a bike and not too many wore seatbelts in cars either. You used to be able to walk into Kmart and buy a gun up until the Hoddle St shootings. Going to the footy meant standing in mud and rain on a Saturday afternoon (and getting spat on at opposition grounds), not sitting in some comfy plastic seat.
Racism was far more prevalent back in the day as well. Vietnamese refugees and those Europeans with the weird names used to cop it when I was in school. Guess this isn't the topic of the thread, but that answers your question. Some things were good when it came to the political correctness you talk about, others were bad.

 

[HappyChappy35]

You used to be able to walk into Kmart and buy a gun up until the Hoddle St shootings. Going to the footy meant standing in mud and rain on a Saturday afternoon (and getting spat on at opposition grounds), not sitting in some comfy plastic seat.

You could buy a gun in Kmart?! My dad recently renewed his firearms license and he has to store them in a one-meter high safe bolted to the floor.
As for the old footy grounds, I did get along to one or two of them as a young kid and they were not nice places to be. I think I'd take a comfy leather seat at Etihad over the gravel outer at Vic Park or Whitten Oval.

You wonder how much further it can go.

The technology we will have at our disposal in the not-too-distant-future will be crazy. Comparing some of the gadgetry we'll have in 2040 to the stuff we have now, for example, will be like comparing today's technology with the technology we had in 1980. Scary when you think about it.

 

[sabre_ac]

I can remember life before the internet, I honestly don't think it is that much different to how it is now, specifically amongst my age group and above (late twenties plus). I think the widspread availability and advancement of mobile phones has had a bigger impact on day to day life.

What is interesting is kids having mobile phones in highschool, I'd imagine that has completely changed the landscape of highschool, I struggle to imagine what it's like.

 

[Gasometer]

- The Internet was once measured in hours of use. I can remember getting a $240 Monthly bill in 1997 all built on use. I probably would have downloaded 5mb or less on my 28k modem. it was expensive.

I was a kid of the 70s and 80s.

You respected older people and authority regardless.

You had to wait for your fave tv show to come on, one tv per house and if lucky you had a VCR.

You could take a esky of beer to the footy...not that I did but i saw a lot of drunk people at the footy and lots of fights. One day someone at princes park threw a can and killed a dad with his family. The crackdown began all for the better.

We rode our bikes a lot.

music was via cassette. Sometimes threw got chewed and your tape was typically lost.

Gossip was just that, gossip spoken with 'respect'. Now it is broadcast to the world and because it's written it somehow is true.

Privacy was private and not a word.

 

[BORK]

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Born in '68. I started high school in 1980. The school were the proud recipients the following year of their very own Apple IIe computer to be shared amongst some 700 odd students.

I started primary school in '73 when I was 4 1/2 years old while I was 12 1/2 when I started high school.

We didn't get a home phone until around 1982. If someone really wanted us they called the neighbours and they'd yell over the fence to us. My grandmother in north of Bendigo in Victoria still had the party like type phone. You had to turn the handle to get the operator who would be a local, they knew everyone and everyone's business and they'd connect you through to the number you wanted.

Outside of school it was either playing sport or training for sport. In those days unless you went to a private school you had to attend the local primary school according to where you lived. There were cricket games and footy matches between the whole neighbourhood. Because everyone in the area went to the same school all the families knew each other and looked out for each other. Guy Fawkes night was the 5th of November each year and we would spend months planning the bonfire and then building it. As someone else posted, all our spare money (not much) would go into by crackers, skyrockets, roman candles etc at the local milk bar. We would walk around collecting glass bottles to get the deposit back on them (5c) and put it all into fireworks.

I think unless you live in a small community or go out of your way to become involved in community matters if you live in a larger area then communities now have become really disconnected from one another. As the youngest of 4 kids, through school and sport and whatever else we got up to, we would have know every kid and their families for 4 blocks. How many of you younger people could say that now?

As I got older we would make plans for going out at football training on the Thursday night or if your mate played for another club you could ring them once or arrange it at school a day or two before and they'd be there at the place and the allotted time.

In the 90s I was in the Navy and I remember when we first got the internet. I remember sitting there watching as a page of text loaded onto the monitor. It took about 10 minutes to load and we were all gobsmacked by it.

There was no mobile phones, no pokies, no speed cameras and stuff all drugs and far less choice of preferred drugs. Police were respected and teachers generally were. Parents mostly sided with police and teachers when you were in strife. For that reason, if you could avoid it, you didn't tell your parents or else you'd cop it for a second time. There was a lot of drunken violence when I was going out to discos / nightclubs / pubs from the mid 80s onwards. People weren't equipped with camera phones and there wasn't cctv everywhere so it largely went unreported, would always be discussion points the following day amongst ourselves though.

You could indeed by firearms at K-Mart. Just walk in and pick one up off the shelf and go to the counter. They had bb guns and slug guns for shooting sparrows and starlings in the suburban backyear and rifles and shotguns for hunting, the ammo was kept behind the counter. You could also buy yo-yos, spud guns and slingshots from the local milk bar. You'd walk around with that spud gun and a spud shooting people until the spud was nothing but a mashed pulp in your hand and spud juice running all down your arm. Skateboards gained popularity along with Leif Garret in the later 70s and BMX bikes came into vogue in the very early 80s. People from the Philippines used to visit your school with yo-yos and show you all the tricks and do 100s of loop the loops with a yo-yo going on each hand. There was 3 levels of yo-yos, beginner, professional and pro. A packet of Scanlens footcards with a stick of chewy were about 10c a pack.

On the weekend after getting home, every channel apart from SBS had a music program on.

I remember AC/DC with Bon Scott out front playing for the official opening of the local shopping centre either late '73 or early '74. The stage was about 4m x 8m.

During school holidays when at primary school, you'd disappear out the front door at 7am and only come home to eat. Your parents never worried. They wouldn't have to book a play date 2 weeks in advance and drive you there. You'd just go off knock on some mates doors and away you'd go. Hike, build cubby houses either above or below ground have yonnie fights with other groups of kids or play sport all day.

Love the internet now, particularly for things like banking, booking travel, sourcing information and to a lesser extent shopping. Mobile phones I'm not too fussed about, they're handy, I barely use mine, I like it for a safety factor, my wife needs hers surgically removed from her ear.

 

[Partridge]

On this, has society always been as soft as it is now? Everything nowadays seems to revolve around all this safety and political correctness bull$hit. Has there always been so much of "that is racist", "you can't say this", or "you can't do that", etc. as there is now?

Nope, not in my experience. It's getting worse all the time. It's why you'll never get Moon landings or genuinely amazing new discoveries or feats of exploration - society is far too soft to take the risk. Look at the news, one footballer dies and it's front page news. Hate to think how most of society would handle going through a war. Not too well would be my guess.

 

[malph]

Half way through year 8, my cutting edge high school made laptop computers compulsory for each student. Boy, did my parents love that. On top of having to fork out $10k per year in fees, uniforms and the like, they were lumped with this ridiculous purchase too. I, however, was over the moon.

The school in its infinite wisdom selected the Macintosh Powerbook 520 for its students. Around $5000 with a 9.5" colour screen, $3500 for the black and white. I of course had to have the "cheap" computer. The trials of youth.


25 MHz CPU.
4 MB RAM.
160 MB HDD.
Beast.

The idea was that we would get an early advantage on learning how to touch type, use a word processor, and of course, the internet. As you can imagine, every byte of that massive hard drive was filled up with games, tiny Simpsons video clips, but mostly pr0n. The more enterprising students would sell 3.5" floppy disks full of pornographic treats at modest prices. Most kids having no internet at home at this time, this quickly became the preferred method of adult material acquisition, rather than the suddenly-antiquated news-stand magazines.

Before too long came the inspections. They arrived unannounced, the source of sudden panic and terror. The head of the computing department soon became the most feared and loathed member of staff. One day, you would look outside the window in English class, daydreaming about nothing in particular, and see him storming across the courtyard - straight - for - you. Immediately after deleting an entire hard drive of pr0n, he would continue to walk harmlessly by, and you were left to lament the afternoon/evening of now boring fapping with which you were left.

In hindsight, I feel that I was intimately involved at the very vanguard of a new way of life for teenage boys everywhere.

 

[Dazb86]

Used to go out a lot more. No mobile phones was pure bliss. If you were out you'd be un contactable and it was awesome.

pr0n magazines. You'd often find them in parks or someones dad would have a stash. Or you'd pull a runner from a milkbar for one.

You used to meet up with friends a lot more also to hang out and just talk shit.

 

[Scotland]

Footy tips were entered on paper, and whoever was running the comp would add them all up - possibly using Excel if they were a whiz.

Footy stats (kicks, marks, handballs, tackles, goals, behinds, hitouts, FF, FA) were in Monday morning's paper.

Arguments about the footy were had in person, and based on observations from watching games. No 'yeah, well this guy averages 0.3 more score involvements per game' and other such nonsense from anonymous strangers.

People also had things like phonebooks, train timetables, address books, envelopes, stamps, chequebooks etc.

I'm 28 and first used the internet when I was about 12 or 13. I started in the days of dialup with a 28.8kbps modem, moved up to a 33.6k and finally a 56k. Then broadband came along. Wow, I can go on the net faster than ever before and the phone still works. Then wireless came along. Wow, I can use my laptop in the lounge room and go on the net without trapsing an ethernet cable all over the house. Then Naked DSL came along. Wow, I can have an internet connection without even needing a phone at all. Now on top of an ADSL2+ connection at home I have a Samsaung Galaxy SII 4G with Telstra. I just ran a 600kb speed test which took one second. A file which would have taken me nearly 3 minutes to download onto a desktop computer costing $2,500+ hooked up to a modem worth $200 or so in 1996 can today be on the mobile phone Telstra gave me for free in a second.

I also studied at university from 2002-2006 which saw some pretty big steps in technology. When I started systems still used 3.5" floppy disks and the network ran at molasses pace. By the time I left everyone was file sharing from flash drives on their laptops hooked up to the wireless network outside on the lawn.

Putting aside the effects that the internet has had on communication skills, hermitism, attention whores etc. from my perspective there have been some pretty brilliant advances. Online banking? Fantastic, I can track my finances any time of day from my own home and I haven't been to the post office to pay a bill in years. E-Commerce? There are thousands if not millions of products and services available to me today that were not so a decade ago. If you look at how we buy/sell cars, houses etc. today you look at paying $50 for a 4 line ad in the paper with a tiny black and white photo and shake your head.

As well as the internet, I think the mobile technology changes of the past 5 years or so have had a huge influence in a short space of time. You can pretty much turn on your phone and say 'hello phone, find me a nice Thai restaurant please' and it will spit out a restaurant name, menu, customer ratings etc. and guide you to it by GPS. And I thought snake on my Nokia 3210 was impressive!

 

[The_Reaper]

Old school computer games like Age of Empires.

 

[Poseidon]

 

[Gasometer]

Born in '68. I started high school in 1980. The school were the proud recipients the following year of their very own Apple IIe computer to be shared amongst some 700 odd students.

I started primary school in '73 when I was 4 1/2 years old while I was 12 1/2 when I started high school.

We didn't get a home phone until around 1982. If someone really wanted us they called the neighbours and they'd yell over the fence to us. My grandmother in north of Bendigo in Victoria still had the party like type phone. You had to turn the handle to get the operator who would be a local, they knew everyone and everyone's business and they'd connect you through to the number you wanted.

Outside of school it was either playing sport or training for sport. In those days unless you went to a private school you had to attend the local primary school according to where you lived. There were cricket games and footy matches between the whole neighbourhood. Because everyone in the area went to the same school all the families knew each other and looked out for each other. Guy Fawkes night was the 5th of November each year and we would spend months planning the bonfire and then building it. As someone else posted, all our spare money (not much) would go into by crackers, skyrockets, roman candles etc at the local milk bar. We would walk around collecting glass bottles to get the deposit back on them (5c) and put it all into fireworks.

I think unless you live in a small community or go out of your way to become involved in community matters if you live in a larger area then communities now have become really disconnected from one another. As the youngest of 4 kids, through school and sport and whatever else we got up to, we would have know every kid and their families for 4 blocks. How many of you younger people could say that now?

As I got older we would make plans for going out at football training on the Thursday night or if your mate played for another club you could ring them once or arrange it at school a day or two before and they'd be there at the place and the allotted time.

In the 90s I was in the Navy and I remember when we first got the internet. I remember sitting there watching as a page of text loaded onto the monitor. It took about 10 minutes to load and we were all gobsmacked by it.

There was no mobile phones, no pokies, no speed cameras and stuff all drugs and far less choice of preferred drugs. Police were respected and teachers generally were. Parents mostly sided with police and teachers when you were in strife. For that reason, if you could avoid it, you didn't tell your parents or else you'd cop it for a second time. There was a lot of drunken violence when I was going out to discos / nightclubs / pubs from the mid 80s onwards. People weren't equipped with camera phones and there wasn't cctv everywhere so it largely went unreported, would always be discussion points the following day amongst ourselves though.

You could indeed by firearms at K-Mart. Just walk in and pick one up off the shelf and go to the counter. They had bb guns and slug guns for shooting sparrows and starlings in the suburban backyear and rifles and shotguns for hunting, the ammo was kept behind the counter. You could also buy yo-yos, spud guns and slingshots from the local milk bar. You'd walk around with that spud gun and a spud shooting people until the spud was nothing but a mashed pulp in your hand and spud juice running all down your arm. Skateboards gained popularity along with Leif Garret in the later 70s and BMX bikes came into vogue in the very early 80s. People from the Philippines used to visit your school with yo-yos and show you all the tricks and do 100s of loop the loops with a yo-yo going on each hand. There was 3 levels of yo-yos, beginner, professional and pro. A packet of Scanlens footcards with a stick of chewy were about 10c a pack.

On the weekend after getting home, every channel apart from SBS had a music program on.

I remember AC/DC with Bon Scott out front playing for the official opening of the local shopping centre either late '73 or early '74. The stage was about 4m x 8m.

During school holidays when at primary school, you'd disappear out the front door at 7am and only come home to eat. Your parents never worried. They wouldn't have to book a play date 2 weeks in advance and drive you there. You'd just go off knock on some mates doors and away you'd go. Hike, build cubby houses either above or below ground have yonnie fights with other groups of kids or play sport all day.

Love the internet now, particularly for things like banking, booking travel, sourcing information and to a lesser extent shopping. Mobile phones I'm not too fussed about, they're handy, I barely use mine, I like it for a safety factor, my wife needs hers surgically removed from her ear.

We are the same age. 1968. One for your diary.