"Last generation who knew life before the internet"

[Nextphonewontbesamsung]

I heard this phrase on R2 or R4 recently (sorry I can't remember the specifics). It was a discussion programme, possibly about something on at the Edinburgh Fringe, and the general consensus was that it was quite unique to be a person who has lived through as an adult straddling that boundary between no internet/then internet.

I am in this generation and I DO actually feel in a bit of a no-mans land. Anyone else? and how old are you roughly? when did the internet become a thing in your life?

I was at work in 1994/5 when I first heard the word "internet". The Chief Exec was having some extra wiring done into his office but he was the only one in our company of about 50 people. I was over 30 so had lived many adult years without it and it was many more years before it become a thing that I just had access to.

I'm struggling to think of a more life-changing invention. Maybe fire? or the wheel?

"There's a word for us - Xennials - because we had an analogue childhood and digital adulthood"

This is it, it's the summer holidays now and my teens are starting to get a bit bored, and I was thinking when I was their age I had four tv channels to choose from whereas they have Netflix, YouTube etc, in fact too much choice really!

For me, as a 13 yr old I would look forward to tv programs or a magazine coming out, but kids these days can binge watch and have unlimited content on their phones, can text groups of friends constantly, it's like a different world!

TheR - I still type www.whatever... - don’t I need to? 😳

@SilverCatOwner - I mean in the context of the history of humanity so far! As a generation, or generation or two.

My kids find it hard to grasp the idea of a life without the internet. I imagine that's similar for some people under the age of maybe 35(?) now too.

DD aged 21 came across a piece of carbon paper the other day (in a craft kit) and was astounded when I described how typists used it! Thankfully she has seen a typewriter (in museums) so I didn’t have to explain that too!

I did my degree 1998-2001 and typed up my dissertation on a word processor.

All my research was done the old fashioned way..... library / books. All students had access to the internet but you had to go to the computer lab and log in using your individual passcode. It wasn't very user friendly.

I started my job in 2001 and whilst we had email, everything was still mainly fax / letter. We used to post invoices to clients and ask for signed contracts to be faxed.

Got my first mobile in 1998 but I smart phone until much later? 2013?

Didn't have a laptop at home until about 2012 as well. Used to do all my surfing at work

Joined FB in 2007. Left in 2008 (am back on it now but only as a member of some groups related to a medical condition. I have no RL friends or family linked to my FB account). Left as it made all my usually sane and rational friends a bit nuts / stalkery.

I don't use any other SM.

I rely heavily on WhatsApp. That has been most life changing for me. Well the whole smartphone has really but I do love WhatsApp.

We were one of the first people I knew to get 'the internet'. I was about 14/15. I learned loads of the lingo and how stuff actually worked (TCP/IP protocols anyone!?).
You actually had to type in long URLs to find anything.

I remember imagining what you could use the internet for and being frustrated that it didn't match up (internet shopping as we know it took really quite a long time to take off).

It's changed so much of society in so little time. I did believe that, as when I first started out, only relatively few freaks and geeks would spend time online - now everyone puts a load of old shite out there by the second

I'm 41 so I fall in this category. I started using the internet at uni in 96/97. At school we used to research with books and if we were really good we got to go on the one apple computer we had and use Encarta!

I remember the early days of downloading (illegally), when you used to set an album to download off kazaa or audiogalaxy overnight. Now it's all streamed and you dont own any music anymore.

I don’t think we are that unique. I’m 40, I remember first encountering the internet at uni. But everyone over 40 probably remembers life pre-internet! And that is a lot of people!

I am 52 and we got a home PC and the internet in 2000. Before that I'd used email at work but not the internet as in searching for things.

It is very hard sometimes to remember life before the Web.

I can't remember first using the internet, but I remember using it to research for a party st uni in 1995 and I remember hearing about a new search engine called google that brought up the results that you actually wanted, not a load of irrelevant stuff, I think that was 1999 in my first proper job. I also remember first seeing an iPhone, I was amazed! My friend showed me the single ladies video of Beyoncé on hers.

@Lockheart we must be a similar age (I'm 33) cause this was basically what I was going to post. I'd say I had a very analogue childhood and then increasingly digital teenage years and a nearly fully digital adulthood.

I’m only 28 but had a great childhood as smartphones weren’t around. We used msn and bebo but it that was it. You would sign off and get back to real life.

I remember calling friends landlines, and if you met up with someone and they weren’t there- you’d just go home or try to find a payphone.

I had a pen pal, used a PC every now and then, texted my friends in txt spk. We got to do stupid stuff without it being online and when I hung out with my friends we just spend time together not staring at a screen.

I’m sat my DD probably won’t have that.

I used computers since the very early days and was frustrated at the slowness. I volunteered overseas for a few years in a place that hardly had electricity never mind computers and came back to the U.K. to everyone having a pc in the home!

I miss the library days actually!

Let's not forget the dial up noise before broadband connection....
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dial_up_modem_noises.ogg

@Sittinonthefloor I think most people over 30 do

We've been on holiday this summer staying at a campsite just up the road from one I stayed at with a big group of friends 30 or so years ago. We live 200 miles away. I was saying to DH one of us must have phoned directory enquiries for the phone no of the local tourist info to find the campsites locally, or maybe bought a listing book of campsites. There were a lot more annually issued books of things then IIRC. We used to get info from Teletext too, that was useful for cinema times etc.

Anyone remember when Pete Tong would read out a web address for something during Friday nights on Radio 1 circa 1997. It took him about 5 minutes!

I started uni in 1994. No internet. By the third year if you got written permission from the course leader you could do into the internet lab and have an hour on a computer. I went with a friend and we had no idea what to do, iirc it was a black screen with no search engine.

I had a 464? PC which I used for word processing. Flat mate had an electric typewriter.

The year I finished uni my parents got a computer with dial up. I got one the following year and search engines had come on leaps and bounds. Ask Jeeves being the main one.

My 18yo dd can not fathom life without the internet. For her it seems as odd as the .stone Age.

I’m glad I have the internet and think it has revolutionised everything but am also glad I grew up without it......even if homework would have been easier with it!

One thing I have noticed is how much I hate using the phone.

I need to call an elderly relative and keep thinking about it at inconvenient moments.

I have to build myself up and get ready to have a chat.

So stupid really.

I love messaging people in order to meet up but never really just call to chat.

It was sometime in the early 90s when I heard about the internet. I knew a bit about it but only because I had VERY nerdy friends who had computers and were really into it. It was like an inaccessible secret World that was exclusively the preserve of computer scientists. The idea that every man and his dog would be using it with ease one day never occured to me. Seemed bizarre at the time.

Late 40's and I can't remember when I first used the internet.

10 go to 20
20 print hi
30 Run

Is all I can remember.
My dad had an electric typewriter than had a bit of white stuff/like thick tipex, in it so you could overtype a mistake.

I went to parties and no one had phones to take any evidence photos!! Of people 'getting off with each other'!

I used a computer to write my dissertation in 95.

I am still useless at tech.

I remember using the library and also encyclopaedias for homework,

If you were interested in buying a house you waited for the once a week property supplement in the local paper or went and looked at the boards in the estate agents windows.

Cinema times/listings in the local paper.

Expletive we used to use the Alan Rogers book of French campsites. I still have my old copy filled with different coloured post its from different journeys! You could phone ahead but sometimes we just drove up and hoped for a space.

I remember doing my dissertation using microfiche and getting medical publications requested from the hospital librarian. Paying 5p per sheet for the photocopy. Then my midwife telling me to try putting www. google .com into my address bar to investigate different milks for my sickly screaming baby and hearing the words 'search engine' for the first time. I do think learning delayed gratification is something my children's generation could do with learning.

I feel quite nostalgic thinking of pre internet times

I am nearly 44 and feel in a very lucky position to have gone through so many iterations of technology. It has helped me be pretty technologically literate as there has been so much change already. Oh another thing? Well that's fine. I expect change and to have to get to grips with new stuff.