"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 was no internet when I was at uni 1991-94.

Well, there almost certainly was but not necessarily accessible to the hoi polloi

The internet has changed life so much as we are online, on FB, Mumsnet ect.
One day I said to my 14 year old neice - I remember before their was no internet. She looked at me as if I suddenly grew an extra head. She said what did you do before you before you had the internet? She has been using a tablet for years from playing educational games to now reading blogs and watching you tube. Meanwhile I have nephews who are playing computer games and chatting with other lads who live several miles away due to the internet. In the next ten years I can see more than one of neices or nephews doing a degree ect in computer science ect.

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!

God yes! Too much choice is overwhelming!

It's like craft wise too - my mum could open her own hobbycraft she's bought that much craft stuff/equipment that nothing gets used because she can never settle to one thing.

I used to sit and read for ages or watch my videos/tv/play on computer games (MSX, spectrum, atari, amstrad and then finally the glorious day I received a SNES!) and could settle and enjoy myself in between school (I loved school on the whole - very strange child ]

Now as an adult I can't settle and constantly the brain keeps wandering to the next thing. I long for my childhood before all this tech! We didn't get the internet at home until 2004 , rarely used it at school (left 2001) first mobile was at 14 I think because I did after school things and would be walking home with school friends in winter when it was dark at 4/5pm - didn't really text or call that much as not many had phones and if you did it was expensive to use.

Too much choice = doing even less in my experience.

Do you remember when everyone had to say "double u double u double u" before the web address?

WWW is still the start of the web address now.

I have literally never seen anyone write double u for W in my life

@poolblack she said SAY not write.

As in we would say www. Etc etc

I worked as a guide for AOL in 1994. It was one of the first internet providers and I used to moderate the chat rooms and message boards. It was well before message boards were commonplace - really odd to think of that now. I did that for years, Guiding in the chat rooms and Hosting on the message boards. Most of the people chatting were in the USA.

One of the biggest changes has been access to porn. Before the internet the only eadily accessible porn was on the top shelf of newspaper kiosks. Every now and then a friend would get a copy of something 70s or German on video. Or the Joy of Sex.

Now it is very different.

Do you remember when everyone had to say "double u double u double u" before the web address?

I remember when people said "aitch tee tee pee back slash back slash colon, double u double u double u before the address". Now that was a faff!

I worked in a computer store the summer before university. That was my first intro to internet. Then when I got to school and was part of a small group who were given the first on-campus internet access and email addresses. So the internet has been part of my entire “adult” life. This was in 92. I feel like I got in right at the perfect time.

@cricketmum84

she said SAY not write

Haha. OP did say 'say' but she wrote it down. That was the entire point of my comment. Not sure what you are trying to get at. It WAS written.

I remember using the first pc at work which was a BBC. I also used a big main frame hospital computer which was so slow we would have to wait for various departments to stop using it before we could. I was sent on various computer courses up and down the country. I also took accountant exams (Sage) and I did a course on coding which I found fascinating. My son thinks I know nothing which is completey wrong so I pretend to let him help me with stuff that I know everything about lol

Oh I have also been a moderator on private sites which a complete nightmate with people using mult accounts and proxies etc.

which was a complete nightmare

I hate how people won't use the phone at work any more. Whilst I appreciate that email / written communication is good for a lot of stuff,. particularly to summarise what is agreed, what is needed etc, sometimes a conversation or a chat about the best way forward with a problem can take minutes instead of many many emails,.sometimes leading to misunderstandings. I also find constant written communication slower which is weird in this supposedly ' fast age'

I remember my boss getting an AOL email address in the early 90s but my first job after uni in 1987 used computers all the time,so.despite being an analogue child , teenager and young adults, my first job used computers as a core part of the job. It was a bit of a shock to me as that we the first time I had used one. I can't really remember when we started using the internet at work but it was probably early to mid 90s as well. I didn't use it at home until until quite a bit later.

Both my husbands were very early adopters of technology. XDH had one of those small apple desktops in 1987 and DH was writing code forr a zx spectrum in the early 1980s at about 12 years old. He used a palm pilot for years to organise himself, then a laptop, so.has had an electronic portable diary for over 30 years.

I'm a bit of a mish mash, I did computer studies O Level and computer science A Level in the early 1980s so I know about Aepanet and JANET, the VI form computers were also networked. We used ASCII a bit too and some machine code.

In my first proper job they set up a system for stock taking and we could send messages to other branches, so a sort of email.

I then went and worked in the NHS ad encountered the odd computer being used for not much and I went to ui in 1997 which is when I finally got the internet but on a dial up.

I once suggested in a class that the lecturer send us an email about something but was shouted down and told it was better to be put on a notice board.

We would come out of a class after being given an essay to write. I would watch classmates troll over to the library while I sat in a computer room and selected books via the online booking system.

I'm 46 and embraced the internet hard in my 20s. So much so that I now make my living with my own internet based business...have done so for ten years. I wish my Dad had lived to see it...he'd have loved it.

I heard that prog too OP and was irritated by the line because i'm a millinnial but i remember pre internet life too, but colleagues 10yrs younger dont even remember life without wifi!

I remember having to call friends' houses on the landline and ask for them

I remember computers at university 1990 -94 and by '93/'94 we were able to (and encouraged to) search for books on the library system. It was amazing stuff at the time!! 😅

Just to add, We were used to home computers though - We has a BBC B and used them at school with printers in the '80s.

I was trying to explain to DC the other day how I had to fax everything over.

Research was done at the library or using an encyclopedia.

In the early 90s I thought I was very state of the art using my swanky word processor instead of typewriter to complete assignments.

Getting a phone that could access Tinterweb really blew me away.

I'm 46 yet feel ancient writing the above.

I’ve had internet for all of my adult life, I remember the fast broadband in halls being amazing. Before that we had internet at secondary school, and dial up at home (but weren’t really allowed to use it). But more than that, we just didn’t know what to do with the internet! We had computer access in school but the web was a strange place. We would basically Hotmail random crap to each other. I remember my geography teacher taking us to the computer room when I was about 14-15 to use this new thing called Google. That was really cool, but we were still using Jeeves etc too. I guess that the big changes came when I was doing my A levels, and the internet was used to monitor ucas applications (applications were still paper based though). Lots of time on university websites, researching courses. At uni computers were a big part of my STEM degree and I had a rather unwieldy laptop (not in the least portable and very shit). MSN messenger was used to communicate with the person next to you/in the next room. Facebook arrived mid degree and that started to run our social lives. During my PhD more and more journals became online and the search engines became more powerful. Back copies were not online and had to be found in the library or ordered through an ILL. Some things had to be requested from the stack. Some papers took weeks to get and then you would forget why you wanted them. I’ve worked at a uni ever since and the web is a big part of our business and culture. If there is an issue with web access nobody gets anything done! I don’t think I’m quite old enough to be a true Xennial but I definitely see how it’s transformed my life!

OH started working on mainframe computers in 1971. I remember seeing Minitel when on holiday in France in the eighties. Minitel was pretty advanced for its time, but ultimately held things back in France, I think.
From the late eighties I was an IT advisory teacher in schools. In the late eighties we had the precursor of Pipex, which was early nineties I think. We spent a lot of time linking secondary schools with schools in twinned cities abroad which frequently involved phone calls to say, "we are on line are you getting anything?" 😀

I like the fact iyou can clearly remember the old days and it had positives.

The internet for all its evils also has positives I wouldn’t want to live without but there are massive evils that we should have prepared for.

We ran to fast and Pandora’s box is well and truly open

It’s not that different to my parents remembering who got the first TV in their road and who could afford to have a telephone. I can remember the first mobiles coming out and they were huge. Me and my mum got one and whilst they weren’t a brick, they were ugly fuckers.

Omg. I'm one of them.