johancruijff
Banned
remember when you had to wait 2/3/4 hours listening to the radio to register the song you needed to make that damn mixtape?
good times
good times
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
I'm so glad I got to experience "life before Internet"
- Thread starter MrOogieBoogie
- Start date
fluffydelusions
Member
Yeah and also sometimes they would stick an ad towards the end of the song or whatever...that sucked lol
Think we just used the newspaper.
fluffydelusions
Member
Same but knew lots that purchased the guide.
My mum would always buy the Daily Mail (I know, I know) for the Weekend tv guide. That was the best, had a wordsearch and crossword at the back that I'd always pinch. Good times.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Screw you, CDs are still alive and well. Sort of.
But yeah, agreed. I don't ever want to go back to how it was before (I can hardly even imagine that), but the transition from no internet to internet everywhere was quite something, and it's cool having been there for it.
But yeah, agreed. I don't ever want to go back to how it was before (I can hardly even imagine that), but the transition from no internet to internet everywhere was quite something, and it's cool having been there for it.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
Yep. For some reason, my mom still does that I think. Makes no sense, but old habits die hard I guess.
I think the greatest thing that's been passed to our generation is our ability to appreciate a moment and being able to cope with "boredom". The younger generation are too used to instant gratification
Before the rise of the internet and technology, my brother and I would wait hours for our parents to come back grocery shopping. We would patiently wait on our seats, chatting or playing games like "I Spy", or if he wasn't around I would think and "imagine" things. Imagining gaming secrets (thank you Ocarina of Time!), imagining what Super Saiyan 10 Goku would look like... if there as ever moments of nothingness, I would keep my mind enthralled with a million thoughts.
In terms of instant gratification, when we went to New Zealand recently I would take my Instagram shots, and put my camera away, sit on a rock and just appreciate the vast scale of the scenery. While the other tourists were scrambling to quickly upload their selfies #vacation, my group just sat there and soaked it all in.
I'm grateful not only for the technology that's come along, but also the way it's been able to take our experiences further. And that's something you can't really appreciate unless you were part of that transition.
Before the rise of the internet and technology, my brother and I would wait hours for our parents to come back grocery shopping. We would patiently wait on our seats, chatting or playing games like "I Spy", or if he wasn't around I would think and "imagine" things. Imagining gaming secrets (thank you Ocarina of Time!), imagining what Super Saiyan 10 Goku would look like... if there as ever moments of nothingness, I would keep my mind enthralled with a million thoughts.
In terms of instant gratification, when we went to New Zealand recently I would take my Instagram shots, and put my camera away, sit on a rock and just appreciate the vast scale of the scenery. While the other tourists were scrambling to quickly upload their selfies #vacation, my group just sat there and soaked it all in.
I'm grateful not only for the technology that's come along, but also the way it's been able to take our experiences further. And that's something you can't really appreciate unless you were part of that transition.
Charles Brandon
Member
Simon's Quest ffs
DigitalRicket
Member
I'm always amazed at the idea that when I was a kid if I wanted to know something about anything, let's just say a common fact about geography, or maybe world history, or even something useless like a pop culture reference, there would be actually no way of finding out unless you owned an encyclopedia or went to the library.
Having all of the world's information, whether it checks out or not, is still mind blowing to me whenever I pull out my phone. To literally be able to listen to any song ever widely distributed (for the most part) at a moment's whim whenever I feel like is still crazy to think even right now.
Having all of the world's information, whether it checks out or not, is still mind blowing to me whenever I pull out my phone. To literally be able to listen to any song ever widely distributed (for the most part) at a moment's whim whenever I feel like is still crazy to think even right now.
fluffydelusions
Member
Fuck kneeling for a tornado lol
D
Deleted member 325805
Unconfirmed Member
That God awful sound old modems used to make. I remember running up a £300 phone bill using a pay as you go Internet service, I was only a kid so didn't really understand I was running up such a high bill. Kids today will never understand the satisfaction of waiting 5 minutes for a photo of a naked woman to load, piece by piece,.
tonysidaway
Member
Let's see. As a child, no phone. I was literally away at university when my family had their first phone line installed. Television, well unless you had a UHF receiver you only got two channels, BBC and ITV. From the mid-sixties onwards you could get a UHF receiver and get improved picture definition (625 scan lines rather than 405 lines) and the new channel, BBC 2. From 1967, if you splashed out for a colour receiver, you increasingly started to see broadcasts in colour.
No computers. No mobile phones.
During the sixties, off-shore pirate radio stations start to serve the UK, with a brash style copied from American stations, serving an audience of teenagers. They're closed down, but many of their best DJs are signed up by the BBC to form Radio 1. The BBC has finally discovered the existence of teenagers.
Seventies, universal colour television broadcasts start to drive the take-up of colour receivers, so through that decade colour becomes near-universal. VHF broadcasts aren't phased out until the mid-1980s.
If you were taught advanced science subjects in school, you would most likely learn how to use a slide rule which enabled you to perform quite complex calculations without constantly looking up logarithms and trigonometric and hyperbolic functions in a book of tables.
By the early seventies your school classroom or lab might also have a digital calculator, so you could queue up to use it if high precision was important. By 1974 the first affordable pocket calculators started to filter down to the point where your parents might buy you one.
Also in the early seventies, your school might provide a teletype link to a local college computer, so for the first time a few older British schoolchildren are learning the basics of computer programming. Mostly in their free time, because there are no computer topics in the school syllabus.
So yeah, things have changed a bit.
No computers. No mobile phones.
During the sixties, off-shore pirate radio stations start to serve the UK, with a brash style copied from American stations, serving an audience of teenagers. They're closed down, but many of their best DJs are signed up by the BBC to form Radio 1. The BBC has finally discovered the existence of teenagers.
Seventies, universal colour television broadcasts start to drive the take-up of colour receivers, so through that decade colour becomes near-universal. VHF broadcasts aren't phased out until the mid-1980s.
If you were taught advanced science subjects in school, you would most likely learn how to use a slide rule which enabled you to perform quite complex calculations without constantly looking up logarithms and trigonometric and hyperbolic functions in a book of tables.
By the early seventies your school classroom or lab might also have a digital calculator, so you could queue up to use it if high precision was important. By 1974 the first affordable pocket calculators started to filter down to the point where your parents might buy you one.
Also in the early seventies, your school might provide a teletype link to a local college computer, so for the first time a few older British schoolchildren are learning the basics of computer programming. Mostly in their free time, because there are no computer topics in the school syllabus.
So yeah, things have changed a bit.
Adam_Vania
Banned
yeah im super glad i got to experience life before the internet. also glad i got to experience BBS culture. i remember magazines.
i still remember going to record stores to track down an album in vain. there are some artists that just never got carried in any record stores and to find their stuff was like finding a goldmine.
nowadays anything no matter how rare is easily gotten. in one way this is really great. in another way it takes the searching out of it completely. everything is so easy to get nowadays.
i still remember going to record stores to track down an album in vain. there are some artists that just never got carried in any record stores and to find their stuff was like finding a goldmine.
nowadays anything no matter how rare is easily gotten. in one way this is really great. in another way it takes the searching out of it completely. everything is so easy to get nowadays.
Adam_Vania
Banned
to make a mixtape you use a copy of the record that you own. no need to wait hours when you own the LP. you are talking about pirating here, not making a mixtape.
Tell that to the major ISPs.
bootsthecat
Banned
All I know is that the internet beats those 3rd rate encyclopedia volumes they sold at the supermarket, that I begged my parents for as a child. That was my equivalent of reading random wiki pages as I so love to do now.
Also waiting at home to receive a phone call. I mean, wtf. The dark ages, I tell you.
The only upside is that I would've been a shut in with all that info at my fingertips, and it prob would've fucked up some of my social growth during adolescence. So I'm glad for that at least.
Also waiting at home to receive a phone call. I mean, wtf. The dark ages, I tell you.
The only upside is that I would've been a shut in with all that info at my fingertips, and it prob would've fucked up some of my social growth during adolescence. So I'm glad for that at least.
I told a younger co-worker last week that when me and friends went to big festivals in the early 90s, we always agreed on a meeting spot so that if you ventured off alone and could not find anyone of the group anymore you could go to the meeting spot and eventually meet your friends again.
He told me he would have been in blind panic for sure if he lost his group of friends on a big festival and did not have his smartphone.
He told me he would have been in blind panic for sure if he lost his group of friends on a big festival and did not have his smartphone.
astroturfing
Member
where did people get snuff material before the internet? i remember there were vhs tapes making the rounds when i was a kid.. they were called Faces of Death iirc. were they even real snuff? i only remember seeing a glimpse or two, because im really not into that sort of stuff. especially as a 10 year old kid.
dont ask me why i thought of this lol
dont ask me why i thought of this lol
tonysidaway
Member
When records cost a week's pocket money, this wasn't such a moral quandary. I remember taping And You and I from Yes's Close to the Edge from Sounds of the Seventies. The album hadn't been released yet, the BBC just got the band to come in and record a session. Kids all over the UK were sitting by the radio with their fingers hovering over the Record button.
Gravy Boat
Member
Remember when TV used to stop for the night? Like after 2am until 6am or 7am, there was no TV, at least if you only had terrestrial channels and didn't have something like Sky.
tonysidaway
Member
They'd sign up for the Army.
teruterubozu
Member
Yeah the new era of "I just googled it 5 seconds ago and now I'm an expert" phenomenon is very prevalent these days, especially places like here on GAF. Back then you actually had to KNOW stuff to be a know-it-all.
Not really.
Folks would just make shit up, and nobody could tell them they were wrong or not since it took effort to actually prove them wrong.
I was born in 1984, so most of my teenage years were before internet(well, the internet we know today) and mobile phones. Back then, the "internet" for me was playing Counter Strike or Starcraft online.
Memory is a bit hazy on what it used to be. I know I spent a lot of time just reading books(comic or not), watching cartoons on tv or playing computer games on floppy disks/cds.
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time reading/watching stuff on the internet and playing computer games.
I guess some things never changes or simply adapt, even 2 decades later lol.
Memory is a bit hazy on what it used to be. I know I spent a lot of time just reading books(comic or not), watching cartoons on tv or playing computer games on floppy disks/cds.
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time reading/watching stuff on the internet and playing computer games.
I guess some things never changes or simply adapt, even 2 decades later lol.
johancruijff
Banned
I was born in 1983, and we didn't get our first family computer/dial-up internet connection until 1996, so I had 13 blissful years of no internet. Basically my whole childhood. How was that time spent?
- playing hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, you name it with my group of neighborhood buddies. Every day it was something different.
- riding bikes with the same friends all over the place, into the woods, exploring, etc.
- playing Nintendo/Super Nintendo with those same friends for hours and hours.
- renting games and movies (usually R-rated horror movies - maaaaannn I watched so many as a kid) on VHS, first from a local corner store (I'll never forget it as they had all their VHS tapes in red cases), and then later at Blockbuster when it opened.
It was a great childhood, the type I feel like the current generation of kids are missing out on due to the combination of helicopter parents and kids being handed smartphones and other devices out of the womb. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was like 22 years old haha. If my parents wanted to get a hold of me, they had to wait until we came out of whatever deep forest or trail we were on. I think that's why Stranger Things resonated so strongly with me, because my childhood friendships and activities felt like they were accurately portrayed on screen.
As for the internet, my favorite early memories were playing Diablo 1, Command & Conquer Red Alert, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake 2 and its mods (Action Quake 2 to this day remains my favorite one) over the good ol' dial-up modem with my friend down the street. We always had to coordinate an hour when our families would promise not to use the phone haha. Such great memories of that time period over a couple summers.
- playing hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, you name it with my group of neighborhood buddies. Every day it was something different.
- riding bikes with the same friends all over the place, into the woods, exploring, etc.
- playing Nintendo/Super Nintendo with those same friends for hours and hours.
- renting games and movies (usually R-rated horror movies - maaaaannn I watched so many as a kid) on VHS, first from a local corner store (I'll never forget it as they had all their VHS tapes in red cases), and then later at Blockbuster when it opened.
It was a great childhood, the type I feel like the current generation of kids are missing out on due to the combination of helicopter parents and kids being handed smartphones and other devices out of the womb. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was like 22 years old haha. If my parents wanted to get a hold of me, they had to wait until we came out of whatever deep forest or trail we were on. I think that's why Stranger Things resonated so strongly with me, because my childhood friendships and activities felt like they were accurately portrayed on screen.
As for the internet, my favorite early memories were playing Diablo 1, Command & Conquer Red Alert, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake 2 and its mods (Action Quake 2 to this day remains my favorite one) over the good ol' dial-up modem with my friend down the street. We always had to coordinate an hour when our families would promise not to use the phone haha. Such great memories of that time period over a couple summers.
RocknRola
Member
I used these 3 a lot
Before my parents decided to upgrade to a wireless phone pair (which blew my mind as a kid, wireless AND a pair!? INSANITY!!) they had a regular old rotary phone. I loved using it when I was little lolAlso I recorded soooo many movies from TV until we got a DVD player. I had, by the age of 14, some 50 home recorded tapes from TV lol I also have fond memories of my DISCMAN (not as old as the walkman, I know
). That said, while back then all those things were normal for me and I have good memories of them, I don't think I would go back. All these 3 things are vastly more easy to do/enjoy with the current tech in place.
Thatonemoor
Member
I was a kid when computers were just starting to roll out to mainstream audiences. I remember being amazed at how cool they were and I actually liked listening to the dial up tone back then. I got excited with anticipation. I use to play math blasters and organ trail for hours. Got the first Spiderman game for the PC and even though it was a laggy piece of shit I still loved it.
Man the beginning of the computer age was pretty awesome thinking about it now. Today it's just a part of your life. Back then computers felt like they connected you to another world.
Man the beginning of the computer age was pretty awesome thinking about it now. Today it's just a part of your life. Back then computers felt like they connected you to another world.
I've had the internet for most of my life, but it wasn't always rosy. We got our first PC with a 28.8k modem when I was 8, so I did experience some of my childhood internet-free, though I'd hardly consider 28.8k dialup as proper internet as it took forever to load webpages or download anything.
Got a new PC with a 56k modem 4 years later, which was a nice boost but still slow as hell because dial up is dial up.
The first big revelation came when we upgraded to broadband cable internet when I was in grade 9 in highschool(or maybe the year before, I can't remember...), it was revolutionary. Not only did my download speeds jump from 4KBps with 56k to >20KBps with cable, but the internet was on all the time and always available, no more spending 5 mins to connect to it and hogging the phone line as well(we didn't have a dedicated line), it totally blew my mind.
Got a new PC with a 56k modem 4 years later, which was a nice boost but still slow as hell because dial up is dial up.
The first big revelation came when we upgraded to broadband cable internet when I was in grade 9 in highschool(or maybe the year before, I can't remember...), it was revolutionary. Not only did my download speeds jump from 4KBps with 56k to >20KBps with cable, but the internet was on all the time and always available, no more spending 5 mins to connect to it and hogging the phone line as well(we didn't have a dedicated line), it totally blew my mind.
Same. I love the internet and think it's wonderful, but I also think it has become a double edged sword for how much of humanity communicates.
Your dad's stash
Your dad's stash
Mammoth Jones
Member
Sorry but I don't agree. Life before smartphones sucked. I remember those days.
Sitting in a doctor's office just looking at the fucking wall.
Commuting with a god damn discman. Oh bump in the road? Let's skip parts of the song!
Is it about to rain? Meh looks OK! Sorry but some of.you mofos don't know how good you got it.
Oh man I'd love to take a photo but I left my polaroid at home...
All my music, movies, information, ability to communicate in my pocket 24/7. Fucking love it.
Sitting in a doctor's office just looking at the fucking wall.
Commuting with a god damn discman. Oh bump in the road? Let's skip parts of the song!
Is it about to rain? Meh looks OK! Sorry but some of.you mofos don't know how good you got it.
Oh man I'd love to take a photo but I left my polaroid at home...
All my music, movies, information, ability to communicate in my pocket 24/7. Fucking love it.
The Albatross
Member
Times are better for most things but I think the sentiment is just that I'm glad I got to appreciate how things were different pre-internet.
Yep we had a subscription to TV Guide. Came every week. It also had puzzles in it.
Yep we had a subscription to TV Guide. Came every week. It also had puzzles in it.
sixteen-bit
Member
Those shady motherfuckers
Playing Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road without a guide. Me and 3 friends were all playing the game at the same time around the age of 10 or 11 (independently). We'd help each other out and it was always a cool feeling to figure out a puzzle before everyone else.
Seriously fuck some of those puzzles though, and fuck the 1-900 hintlines they peddled with them
I got my first cell phone at 17, and even then people weren't glued to them. I remember the Razr coming out and that being a big deal, but it was nothing like the smartphone transition, people still used their phone mainly as a phone.
Seriously fuck some of those puzzles though, and fuck the 1-900 hintlines they peddled with them
I got my first cell phone at 17, and even then people weren't glued to them. I remember the Razr coming out and that being a big deal, but it was nothing like the smartphone transition, people still used their phone mainly as a phone.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
The internet is awesome but there was something wonderful about pre-internet life as well.
Glad I was there.
You mean the Save icon?
Glad I was there.
You mean the Save icon?
Aquavelvaman
Banned
I'm just glad I finished high school before twitter and whatnot came out
Hahaha ok let's go futher. Have you ever use a typewriter?
Darklor01
Might need to stop sniffing glue
I remember walking along miles of train tracks which were still in use, but not often. Crossing over bridges which were falling apart with parts of the wood between the tracks broken apart. Lots of fun. We were constantly in the woods playing around. I have to believe kids still do this, just, not anywhere near as many as there used to be.