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Any one else remember the world before the proliferation of PC's


LordLi1

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Ya, I remember (ironically) my grandma was the first person in my family to own and use a computer on a regular basis and even had dial up internet. We had them when I was in elementary school but the only thing we used them for was reading tests for books. Basically instead of doing a book report it tested you on the book to make sure you read it. Hard to think about life without my PC now, lol.


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  • 1 month later...

Lol I remember. Not only because of my age, but also cause I lived in a small town without Internet for a while. I remember having to search books in the library for sources back in grade 7-9 because we didn't have access to the Internet at the time at school (I was.. 12 or something? So like 1999-2002). Needless to say it was a pain in the ass, you had to search through the books a hope it had what you needed, if it didn't, off to the next one.

Even when the Internet got here it still wasn't the best option for sources and learning since stuff like wiki didn't exist like it does now.

Cell phones I think changed life more. Before you had to call your friends mom's house to check if they were there to hang out, if they weren't, then hopefully they told you where else they could be otherwise you have to call your other friends. Or meeting up some place and if they were late and you were on time, you had 0 idea if they were late or couldn't make it. Cell phones changed that quite a bit.

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Yeah I remember back when nobody had a pc and it was boring as hell.  I think it was mid 90s when we got dial-up not the fast 56k one the slower version and it took so long for a page to load you could go get a drink and it would still be loading.

I didn't think it was boring, just different. I was pretty young so I didn't rely on the computer or video games for fun..

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Since I was born and even before that, my grandma always had a computer in the house, though they were usually really old and outdated ones.

We had dial up internet for some of the computers up until 2008 I think.

I used one of the computers first when I was 2, my grandma was teaching me how to make a powerpoint animation.

After I got the hang of that, she tought me how to start up tetris and some taco bell game.

I never used the internet until much much much later, but she did a lot.

Edited by Tsukumo Yuma
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  • 2 weeks later...

I had my first computer at 10. Can't really remember how life was before that but I'm pretty sure I played outside with friends from my age.


When I couldn't, I certainly had dolls to play with. 


But the 90's were kinda great anyway ! I'm sure my life wasn't that boring. I just can't remember well ^^'


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Reading this thread makes me feel old.  I remember my first home computer as a TRS 80 Mark 3 (aka the Trash 80), I used to use an old VUUCOM terminal to access my local bbses in the early to mid 80s and occasionally Internet IRC through the local university system via dial-up back in the days when 300 baud was good and 1200 baud was smoking hot!  So yes, I remember the world pre-PC, and especially pre-GUI Internet (aka the creation of the WWW, HTML, and so forth), when the Internet was a text only service for universities and such as a defence against us all being turned into cinders by all the nukes we were going to use on each other and returning the survivors to stone age ignorant idiots.  I came of age before the Cold War ended, and grew up in a known first strike target, so that tends to be a part of how I remember  the pre-PC world.


 


Yes, I know, I am way too old to be a major anime junkie, but I don't care, it hooked me in the 70s and I've never looked back with any regret.


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Since I was born in 98, I can barely remember a time without internet. I was around 3 when my parents let me on the computer for the first time. I was shocked that internet existed. I remember we had sail up until I was around 8. I also remember web searching for the first time. I looked up spongebob. I found nicks site, I then clicked on a link, waited for a while, and watching a clip of the show. My mind was blown.

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i do remember a time before owning my own computer and when having a 5 gig drive was HUGE and there was no way you could fill that monster.  Access to porn was so difficult back then.  At the age of i think 10 i came up with a super idea.  After finding an old play boy at the dump that had a card to order more in them i found an empty house on my street and wrote down its address on the card and sent in a moneygram note along with it.  Then magic happened: i got my first magazine in the mail.  I got 12-13 of them before my post box was removed by the post office and the magazines did not come and were returned with refund, so in all i missed out on about 5 of them from my subscription.  I still have them what a great memory.  Now with computers that have 8tb hard drives this wonderful content is a click away and is free.

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  • 6 months later...
On ‎30‎/‎11‎/‎2015 at 4:12 AM, ElementalCards said:

As my co-worker would say, "there's no communication with people anymore, everything is done by email now".

"There's no communication with people anymore, everything is done by instant communication"

The kindest way to put this is that you sound like one of those people who posts those cartoons where kids are poking a book questioning what it is.
It's an ageist concept designed to relegate the younger generations communication methods as lesser of importance due to their speed and brevity.

If you question that statement, you will first have to ask yourself  how an email is not communication while postal mail is.

 

 

Moving on, old world times:

Parents could actually be a parent and use classical conditioning on their child in public to approval of others (compared to now with the no smack laws)

I could go wherever I wanted, as long as I was back before dark (streetlights on)

We'd freely leave bicycles on our front lawn without them being stolen.

 

The biggest change Is not the PC, it is the cellphone. But that's not what's made it all different.

Population has been exploding in most of our more "developed" countries. With that anonymity became a factor, and opportunity based crimes went from "nah I know that guy" to "who the hell is that? F him it's mine"

 

The other thing of note is the value of honour. Back then your word meant something. Nowadays due to the anonymity factor we have tons of bold liars.

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Not really.

Maybe it's because my father seemed to always work from home from time to time...

But I've ALWAYS had a PC in the home.

Sure, they were (until I was a teen) shit that was going into the dumpster at my father's work place...
But some of them were pretty good, because government loves to waste money on yearly upgrades.


I remember my father being kind of a dick and not letting me use our new(ish) Win95 machine until I had used an Apple II for a summer.

That Win95 was so fucking amazing.
I mean...most of ya'll have no damn clue how mind blowing it was playing games like Yoda Stories and X-Wing for the first time!

Edited by Tanis
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