The first time you ever heard about something that is now commonplace

[CormoranStrike]

I have two.

I was chatting to a guy who had an audio company in the early 90s I reckon and he mentioned Bluetooth, which confused me. He raved about this new tech and said he was sure it would be massive.

The other was interviewing a forensic scientist on his retiral from the police. He had been the most senior of his speciality at Lockerbie.

He was explaining transference (Occam’s razor) and I can remember sitting on his couch in his living room in the small village he lived in and saying, “wait, do you mean evidence of me having been in your house is now indelibly here, I’ve left traces?” - totally fascinating.

There started a fascination with crime novels, too.

I also remember in the 80s by younger brother's best friend Tom (age about 12) playing a "computer game" I believe it was the BBC computer (have I got this right nerds?) Which he attached to the TV screen. It was completely dark with no graphics at all. Then a sentence of type appeared saying "You are in a haunted castle" or similar and Tom had to type directions such as "go left" and the game would say "you are near a doorway". Thrilling. It was a mystery that you had to solve. In the dark. Just typing. Sounds a bit like The Birdbox.

Wireless electricity.
My old friend kept going on and on about this concept, back in 2005
I lost contact but tempted to find him again and talk about wireless phone chargers

So which decade am I off? I don't see what you are referring to?

WereyouHarewhenIwasFox?

Argggh blueskies not you Ida they are stuck in the 80s, whereas we know the 90s was full of teeny tiny things!

My brother telling me 14 or so years ago about this thing called Amazon Prime and you could order your socks online and have them delivered in 2 days time and it only cost $79 a year for membership. And I thought what kind of an idiot orders their socks online. Of course now I'm the idiot who orders my socks and just about everything else online.

Sorry my grammar is appalling. I meant blueskies, not you Ida! Sorry.

I had this friend in school in 1972 who had the game Pong when it first came out and we would all go over to his house to play it. I think the part that was extra amazing was that after 5 minutes I was bored and the boys just kept playing it for hours and hours.

Does anyone else remember the internet being called the information superhighway in the 1990s?

The first time my mum played tomb raider on a PlayStation. She said “it’s not as good as pong”.

My mum used to do the weekly shop and then check her receipt against the shoppingwhen she came home, to make sure she hadn't been overcharged. It was like '99p, that must be the oranges, £1.80, that must be the washing powder'.

Then, probably around late 80s or early 90s, a fancy new supermarket opened with barcode scanners. And we all gasped in awe at the receipt that listed each item by name!

Actually, I remember as a small child when the first large supermarket opened in town. 'Its got 16 checkouts. 16!!!'

Wereyou 😂

Does anyone else remember the internet being called the information superhighway in the 1990s?

And using Netscape Navigator!

I know there were many popular search engines before Google but of course can't remember them now!

I first encountered the internet when I joined uni in 1996 - I couldn’t think what to look up so went to a make up site!

I first got a mobile phone in 1997. It wasn’t a brick but was far bigger than this iPhone I’m typing on.

@BartonHollow
I first got into the internet via telewest tv box (kind of cable tv) in 1994, using America online (aol now) so that technology was available long before 2000 I used it mainly for chat rooms and looking back I'm
Not sure it really did much else tbh. I chatted for months with a man in Alexandria, USA 🇺🇸 and years later was thrilled to see it (online!) on Walking Dead :)

Were the electric milk floats from the 60s/70s/80s the precursor for electric cars now? I mean, electric cars, who'd a thought?

Actually some of the original cars were electric, some from the 1920s are still around.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle

Surely everyone had the Internet from the mid 90s? Yes it was dial up, but I cannot believe that some of you were only hearing about it for the first time in 1997-98, fucking hell.

It was expensive and slow.

You had to pay for a modem, an internet provider and then the phone call. And you couldn't make a phone call if you were on the internet.

I first got the internet with a free provider at uni in 1998. Back in the early 1980s I'd taken A Level computer science and the computer room was networked.

In my first proper job in the late 1980s the stock control was computerised when I was there, we had an early type of networking system so we could message other offices in other towns so it wasn't that I didn't now how useful it could be. I used to connect to down load email a couple of times a day.

Considering HTML wasn't around until the mid 1990s (other than at CERN) and Internet Explorer not being released until about 95/96 I don't think it was that common.

the first home freezer in the 70s mum blanching veg for hours before putting them in the freezer
mum going on a telex course to learn how to use it
microwave amazing mum bought one tried making cakes and all sorts in it
dial up internet never forget that irritating noise!

1992 was when the Internet started, we had it at home. I used to write down the pages I visited via ftp in a small notebook - no web browsers then.

^started for home users of course.

Surely everyone had the Internet from the mid 90s? Yes it was dial up, but I cannot believe that some of you were only hearing about it for the first time in 1997-98, fucking hell.

My husband worked in IT so we had a computer at home and had Internet (dial up). But I don't know anyone else who had a computer at home in the 1990s. By 2003 I still had a steady stream of colleagues asking if they could come to my house at the weekend to use my computer to look up the price for holidays etc because none of them had a computer at home, and accessing the Internet on your phone was still very new.

Not new to me but new to Britain. I had a hipster explain bubble tea to me. I was quite bemused. And when a Starbucks barista tried to explain matcha.

Oh and I remember someone mentioning Facebook in class in the latenoughties and me saying ‘what like MySpace?’. I feel so old...

My friend sent me a text message in 1997 and i thought, wtf? that wont catch on.

Returning to work (public sector) from mat leave in 1995 and completing my application forms to be approved to have access to the internet - we had to have a good business reason for using it before we were given access.eg having to access info on a specific government website. DH works in IT so we already had internet access at home and I was aware of its potential. Also had my first mobile phone early 1995 so I would be able to call DH when baby was on the way.