Discussion Anyone born before 1975, would you relive it with no internet or cell phones?

[lakedude]

It has been great to watch it all happen. I doubt any future generation will see as much progress.

To go from no personal computers, no cell phones, no internet and a 19 inch black and white TV with a manual tuner and tubes that needed to be fine tuned every other channel change to everything we have now including a 55 inch 4k flat screen that was cheaper than the 19" has just been an amazing ride.

It would be hard to go back and spend money on old tech like a $500 VCR that was nearly impossible to program.

Remember when long distance was outrageously expensive? I mean we had phones but only rich people could call someone outside their local area.

Love the new tech, especially how we basically carry a supercomputer in our pockets that even Star Trek and James Bond couldn't even imagine back in the day.

Before 2000 it took a desktop computer overnight to transcode video and now my phone can do it in about an hour on battery power which is just incredible.

So yeah I could go back and watch it all happen again but spending money on old junk would be painful. Would definitely avoid the early adopter expense and purchase fewer things and just wait for the better things. Wouldn't buy plasma expensive monitors for example.

 

[Muadib]

Either way.

I'm with you. There are + and - on both sides.

 

[brianmanahan]

We had C64 'puters in school.

LOAD "*",8,1

i instinctively tried to push shift+2 to type those quotes, lol

 

[Leymenaide]

Who needs tech when you could walk into the local hardware store and buy a stick of dynamite for 50 cents? I was making hard cider in high school, who needed drugs. I could make enough to pay my way through a state university with my checking account. Never looked for a loan. I was introduced to punch cards in university never dreamed it would go this far. Never dreamed of being in the middle of it all. I was happy out on the edge taking data in an onion research field.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Didn't really have the internet until 1996 when I started University at the age of 21 and was previously in the military. Saw a bit of it HS in '90-'92. No cell phone until October of 2000.

Internet, social media, has ruined society. So glad I was outside fucking off my entire childhood forming real relationships before the internet!

 

[lxskllr]

I honestly don't know how I did it before the internet. I'm completely self taught in my occupation, and if you wanted to learn something, you had to get it from books. Remember those things? I think I just lucked into finding books. I don't remember going to the library. The internet has made everything wonderful, but I wouldn't have a problem going back. I did alright, and I'd do alright again.

 

[MrSquished]

I was born right on the cusp of that year, so we did start to use the internet in the mid 90's for stuff though it was much more limited than now.

I would like some technology that cell phones offer like GPS navigation, easy way to message with people you need to exchange quick things with, keep lots of high quality music with you all the time.

The internet gives you the ability to find out about things online like cool events locally from music to art and spoken word stuff to biking and hiking groups - especially for smaller events, and honestly, it can be a good way to meet people, both in some event groups and dating. Never backpacked before but found backpackers to go with online. There are support groups that are easier to find if you have a condition such as I do (Achalasia, an esophagul disorder, and bipolar disorder) not to mention hobbies. Online dating can truly suck, but it's how I have found a great person and other smaller less impactful partners, plus hey, it can get you laid. Everybody says you can meet that special person in real life, but my gf is someone who lived in the same are I lived in for years and had a slight overlap with me in social circles and definitely lots of overlap in hangout spots too. Before the internet it was proximity that found you a partner. But only a fucking annoying dating app brought us together, not constantly almost crossing paths locally. I gotta respect that because I have heard of many other success stories.

I do like being able to easily watch a variety of stuff online such as lots of stand up to great cooking videos and everything in between. The internet has some wonderful shit on it that inspires and teaches. YouTube university is a fucking thing. Stuff where you can learn about travel, the world, food and also laugh. But the social media stuff of having to make everything a post-worthy event and political propaganda is melting people's minds. The explosion of available information has evolved too fast and the human brain has not evolved fast enough to deal with it.

It's a coin flip for me. While most of what I wrote leans positive, that last part is possibly destroying most of the progress our society has made the last stretch of the last bunch of decades.

 

[soulcougher73]

born in 73. absolutely i’d go back.

 

[FelixDeCat]

born in 73. absolutely i’d go back.

Here here.

I could live w/o cell phones or the internet again. We used pagers, payphones, Mapsco and landlines.

 

[lakedude]

Here here.

I could live w/o cell phones or the internet again. We used pagers, payphones, Mapsco and landlines.

Oh man I could go back but maps were a pain. Sure a free Statefarm atlas could get you across the country but when you got to some stinking small town too little to be in the atlas you had to buy a local map, if you could even find one. Had to buy a map for every little town you went.

That is were a phone booth could be handy because you might find a map in the phone book, if some turkey hadn't already ripped it out.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Oh man I could go back but maps were a pain. Sure a free Statefarm atlas could get you across the country but when you got to some stinking small town too little to be in the atlas you had to buy a local map, if you could even find one. Had to buy a map for every little town you went.

That is were a phone booth could be handy because you might find a map in the phone book, if some turkey hadn't already ripped it out.

There was something that was lost over the last 20+ years of internet propagation and expansion.

Regional thinking is not as strong as it used to be. So has the wonders of the world to some extent in that in the past if you wanted to learn something you did not already know or you wanted to know more about you had to go to local experts or your local library.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Not without the Internet...

But you know it is coming so you get to be ahead of that game, too.

 

[sdifox]

But you know it is coming so you get to be ahead of that game, too.

Read the title of the thread...

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I thought the OP was stating reliving the period when the Internet or cell phones existed. He didn't say time wouldn't progress forward ( or backward). And I just finished watching X-Men: Days of Future Past so I naturally thought I'd go back in time with the knowledge and even though that technology hadn't existed YET doesn't meant it couldn't get invented and deployed for my personal win-win situation. The bigger immediate bummer would be having to use a f-ing typewriter or pen/pencil to write down all the future knowledge I have in my head once I got back in time. Also, would I be my age, my age when I was originally back in 1975 (10), or something other? Gosh, I would be such a pool boy going back.

 

[dank69]

Lying awake at 3am thinking about scrambled Playboy channel in my early teens and 56K struggling to load the bottom half of a naked Stephanie Seymour pic in my early 20s:

 

[pauldun170]

Oh man I could go back but maps were a pain. Sure a free Statefarm atlas could get you across the country but when you got to some stinking small town too little to be in the atlas you had to buy a local map, if you could even find one. Had to buy a map for every little town you went.

That is were a phone booth could be handy because you might find a map in the phone book, if some turkey hadn't already ripped it out.

Laminated Hagstroms for the win!!!

 

[sandorski]

But you know it is coming so you get to be ahead of that game, too.

The only game I'd be aware of is the sheer amount of boredom I'd experience not having the World at my fingertips. Everything you Watch has been chosen by someone else, would broadcast Once with no option to repeat until the next time someone else decided to rebroadcast it. Also, I have seen most of the good stuff and a lot of it doesn't hold up.

The only advantage would be Stock purchases which seem easy enough, but Life in general would be missing some significant things that are now a part of my daily life.

 

[pauldun170]

The only game I'd be aware of is the sheer amount of boredom I'd experience not having the World at my fingertips. Everything you Watch has been chosen by someone else, would broadcast Once with no option to repeat until the next time someone else decided to rebroadcast it. Also, I have seen most of the good stuff and a lot of it doesn't hold up.

The only advantage would be Stock purchases which seem easy enough, but Life in general would be missing some significant things that are now a part of my daily life.

 

[sandorski]

It's raining.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

There was a very thin sliver of time between the pentagram points of dogpile, google, gamespy, wikipedia, and online food ordering where the internet was the glorious future of humanity. Unfortunately that pentagram summoned the demons of commercialism and targeted media, and our future became dust.

 

[Fir]

Definitely. I was 23 in 1978.

 

[A///]

hell yes.

 

[A///]

There was a very thin sliver of time between the pentagram points of dogpile, google, gamespy, wikipedia, and online food ordering where the internet was the glorious future of humanity. Unfortunately that pentagram summoned the demons of commercialism and targeted media, and our future became dust.

you could have led with life sucks now and it'd be the same, but less drama.

 

[BoomerD]

1975? Sheee-it...I got married in 75...first kid was born in 76. I played with computers a bit...mostly as an add-on to video gaming...Atari, Colecovision, Intellivision...then Nintendo. The first "computer" I owned was a Coleco Adam...not very impressive, but I DID learn some crap via "coleco-basic," but it mostly opened my eyes to the impending revolution. I finally decided to actually LEARN some "computer stuff" in the late 80s at the local high school's ROP program...and that beige box on the floor was the CPU...and it had dual 5 1/4" floppy drives...that REALLY opened my eyes. DOS, as big of a PITA as it was, was way easier than basic...then some wimpy geeky guy named Bill Gates introduced Windows. 2.0 I think was my first introduction to Windows...but 3.1 was the thing that caught my attention and held it...and Windows 95 made computing easy for everyone.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

you could have led with life sucks now and it'd be the same, but less drama.

Spend 15 months on that edgelord reply, did you?