How did you live before the internet and mobile

We went outside. There's things out there. And stuff.

I lived in a cave offshore a bit and hunted for nuts and berries and lived off of fish and wild game.

The thing is...

We thought we did have instant gratification. lol

In 1985, when I was 10, I could ask permission to ring a friend and we'd meet up and play, or go round up the rest of the gang. We had rivers, lakes, and the sea to go splashing and fishing in or skimming rocks. Shops were close by and open after school, and although closed on a Sunday, that didn't bother us - one mom or other would always have sweets in the kitchen. The outside - and all the cool stuff about it - was just the opening of a door away.

Ah-ha - and then you had the inside. Acorn Electron, BBC, Sinclair computers. Games consoles (forget all the names, but I had 'em all). In the UK, 3 TV channels eventually became 4 (wozer!), and later on we had cable and satellite and I could finally live like a civilized person, as my family back in Canada had been doing. (For decades, I might add, still with a little irritation, I admit). When movies came out, you were there - smack bang - on a Saturday morning. And when pocket money didn't stretch, you had videos. My mom would dutifully record movies on VHS and I must have rewatched Superman and Star Wars 8 million times.

I can't speak from an adult perspective - but growing up before internet and mobile telephony? Those times were magic. I'll bet we all feel the same way, though, no matter our generation, as long as they were good times of course. The thing about the past? You usually remember the good times more than the bad.

I will say, though, there was one sucky thing about growing up in the 80s - waiting so long between Star Wars movies.

Things changed in '86 for me when I was plonked in prep school. But the gratification still seemed instant: dungeons and dragons as soon as prep finished at 1930, spending the summer high-jumping on Wednesdays with an audience of girls, playing Elite Frontier on the BBC computer on weekends, and tons of other stuff. And then there was rule breaking. Break enough of them and the points mounted up - leading to a trip to the headmaster and a whack on the butt with a cricket bat. Instant, that was, but not I suppose gratifying.

I'd be willing to bet my daughter's grandchildren (touch wood, she has them) will look at her youth and think the same thing: "Grandma, how the heck did you live without push-button, materializing pizza?!!"

Tom

Are you kidding me?

Outside was the place to be! There were lakes to swim in or fish at or water ski on, fields to explore, woods to spend the whole day in building forts and cuckoo nests in. (Long story, don't ask!)

There were pedal bikes, hula hoops, footballs, baseballs, basketballs, skate boards, other kids. There were tether balls, volleyball nets, red rover-red rover. There were swings, slides, the party store, hide and seek, tag, king of the mountain, minibikes, horses. I could go on and on!

I was always disappointed when the day ended because I didn't have time to do everything I wanted.

Wow! How things have changed...

Terra

Life was less complicated before this newfangled internets.

Life was better back then because people had REAL friends. You didn't spend all your time online with one device or another. You only had a couple of TV channels so you either liked what was on or you didn't. As a kid and teen I rode my bicycle as much as I could. Life was much cheaper then as you didn't have to buy the latest, expensive toys all the time.

Remember that today's young people can't understand it but I bet their children will think the same about their childhood.

When I grew up all the kids on the block were outside playing games, running around having fun. Never see that anymore. We were hardly ever inside.

Had one of the first color TV's on the block, everyone came over to see. Still didn't watch it much.

I think about it sometimes. Now we have Internet access and other modern technologies. But like in everything rhere are pluses and minuses, that't why I don't think people who lived without all this were unhappy or something like that, the just didn't know about it and lived happily.

I was 14 when I first had access to our super fast 28k dial-up.

Prior to that I'd go to the library every day to read books. The library had Internet shortly before I did, and I'd sit in the library from opening till closing working on my website every day. I hated Sundays because the library was closed. I created it using a page builder called expage. It was called "Team Rocket Invaders". I was a big Pokemon fan.

The Internet at home allowed me to learn, and I stopped going to the library. It also allowed me to talk to others on IRC and get help with programming. I still use the same IRC channels today!

Today, I don't own a smartphone. I own a bog standard phone. Not even a colour screen. I used to have iPhones, and even develop applications. But, since I ditched the smartphone and came off social networks my productivity, and work, has increased 3 fold. It also forces people to actually ring me, and visit me, rather than chatting on Facebook.

Smart phones are also incredibly dangerous. I've developed proof of concepts that demonstrate how insecure an iPhone is. Look up Karma with Hostapd. Lots of info on this out there already.

I use the Internet as a tool to improve my knowledge. I always have. I don't really do marketing for money these days. I could make a heck of a lot, I have in the past, I've worked directly with Facebook's security team. But I just don't have any interest in money these days. I had Cancer, it made me see life very different. I'm focusing more on developing open source applications and adopting Richard Stallman's philosophy.

I feel every human has a moral obligation to share knowledge, to help the future develop and evolve. The monetary system has created a class of elitism, where the rich are powerful.Tthose who make important contributions to society are often ignored. For example, Richard Stallman changed the world, yet many iPhone and Android users will still state point blank Windows is better than *nix, and Linux is awful. The last person to have this argument said "Linux is free because nobody wants it".

But they don't realise if it wasn't for Richard Stallman they wouldn't be posting pictures of their new car to Facebook.Hardly anyone knows who he is. Bill Gates is more well known than Trovolds. It's backward considering Trovolds has done so much more for society than Bill.

Everything has monetary value these days, and if you don't have cash, society likes to push you out. Even when some of us choose not to make money. At some point the economy will crash, and when it does, the rich will be poor and the world will look to those with knowledge to help fix the mess. The rich will expect those who spent their life researching - without financial motive - to pull together, yet these same people feel they have no obligation to share knowledge freely.

The Internet has helped me realise how greedy people are to make the most amount of money in their short existence. And it's shown me what lengths people go to in order to make money.

Do you even really use the INTERNET, or are you talking more of the java and WWW networks. We could ALWAYS purchase on demand. That has been done since like the 1800s. You could EVEN do it with no credit! As for loading, that isn't due to the internet though they haven't really pushed development until about that time.

As for mobile, I ASSUME you mean mobile phones? YEAH, THOSE predate the internet ALSO! Most didn't have them due to cost and coverage.

Steve

We go to sleep very early, maybe 8PM everyday. Without internet or mobile, there're nothing to do. Life would be so boring. I can't imagine how life would be then.

Sam