"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?

I remember getting my first mobile in about 1998. DH got the same one. I read the manual and we realised that you could send typed words to each other. No one else I knew sent text messages.

I got my first internet capable computer in 1996. I remember there was one button you could press which would bring up a random web page. I also recall that Thornton’s and Victoria Wine has online shops.

I did my first online supermarket shop in 1999. You had to get a cd based catalogue from Tesco.

I remember in pre internet days moving to a new town and having to look in the yellow pages to find the location of the nearest supermarket and then looking up in the A to Z to see where it was and how to get there.

I started my first job in 1999 and I remember being flummoxed by being taught by my line manager to write a memo using an internal envelope if I wanted to send a message to someone in the same building.

I thought "why not just send an email??!" The company I worked for did have the internet/email, and luckily they caught up pretty quickly that email was more efficient than internal memos!

I remember getting the internet at home in 1999 and no one knowing what to do with it. I never really got to use it as a) it cost to much and b) by the time it loaded my mum wanted the phone so had to turn it off.

I did a secretarial course in 2000 and the woman running it told us it was just a fad.

I’m a member of that generation. I became an adult at the end of the 80s, so I experienced life, and the workplace before the internet and mobile phones, never mind social media.

It was just a completely different world and looking back I have no idea how we managed to communicate, navigate or access information.

I first used e-mail at work in the early 90s, first accessed the internet a couple of years later and got an internet enabled home PC in 1996. Dial-up, of course. I was one of the first of my very non-techie peer group to do this. I remember reading about Diana’s death on the then brand-new BBC News website.

There are still many, many people who have never used the internet.

I can't remember there being any serious internet before around 1997. There was email, though. The sophistication!

Before I go round claiming to be one, how are we pronouncing Xennials? "Zennials"? "Exennials"?

I still carried a paper road atlas in my car until I sold it a couple of years ago, as when I learnt to drive I wasn't able to look up routes on my phone if I was lost.

I still do and always will - it came into its own after the Great Floods of 2014 when a road on our route was closed and the Sat Nav couldn't conceive that we might want to go a different way. So the Sat Nav may have been punched and ripped off the windscreen once DH had calmed down, he was able to direct me with the AA road atlas I kept in the boot.

I started work as a legal secretary in 1982 so have gone from an electric (not even electronic) typewriter to today. I swear no more work gets done, it just gets amended and tweaked a billion times.

I am of the opinion these days that the internet should only be used for booking holidays and for watching cat videos.

And MN obvs.

The main thing that sticks with me that with computers and then the internet there was no training. Maybe I just worked for a rubbish company. We just made it up as we went along. We had a department called Data Control and no one (except the people in it!) knew what they did!

I sometimes wonder what it'll be like in future, explaining to puzzled children the perils of doing a 'hill start' in your car, changing gears and dropping the clutch etc. With their self-driving cars they won't have a bloody clue what we're going on about. Just for what it's worth, am currently sat on a cross-channel ferry heading back to Dover on a beautiful sunny day. There's full WiFi and everybody is staring at screens. I'm heading out on deck for some fresh air and sunshine!

Maybe that’s the future @Leafyhouse, or maybe future generations will not be able to own self driving cars because the planet will be flooded/overcrowded and burning like a furnace. With any luck the internet will do its job of mobilising people worldwide to deal with the climate emergency before it’s too late.

I've just realised the www. on mumsnet.com isn't there! When did that happen? Obviously you never had to type it in, but it automatically put it in anyway.

Oh gohs yes memos. And special memo pads. A message could take half a day to get to someone and external envelopes for sending files to another office. Which would be overnight.

All the photocopying of files and documents! Attaching files to an email is so so different.

Yeah I'm 45 this year and for years I have enjoyed telling my 21 year old about life before the internet just so I can see the look on her face. It's weird how she just cannot conceive of such a time!

I worked for BT when the internet came in, so I almost feel at 53 that it’s always been there in the employment world.

We had email and an intranet long before any of my friends employers.

On the other hand I can still remember having a dial phone at home, coin phone boxes and a life before mobile phones, Facebook and Netflix so I could easily live in either world.

Poolblack - I wrote w down phonetically in my op because I was trying to get across how it sounded if you were listening to someone on the radio (for example) or over the phone give out their web address. People don't say it now, have you noticed?

I started university in 1998 and most of the people I knew didn’t have their own computers. I hand wrote most of my assignments for the first couple of years. I did a year in industry and used some of my savings for a computer for my last year.

One of our first assignments was to research and write an essay on a topic using only the internet! We had to cite the web pages we found.

My topic was to do with how effluent discharges from chimney stacks. There was very little information on back then, I barely found enough info to write one side of A4!

I hand wrote letters to friends and family, and used the communal phone in halls. Loved it!

All essays were handwritten at school first draft and second

I nearly lost but recovered 5000 words at university - god the stress

I am glad it was an effort to contact people back then. I only spoke to my parents once a week at most, I think it made settling in to university much easier. I also had to figure stuff out for myself much more.

My parents didn’t know that much about my course, it was my ‘thing’.

My friend who’s child went to university last year seems to be in constant contact, knows all the details of her course, friends, social life. The child was very homesick at first and I think the constant communication with home and the ease of being contactable made it worse.

I can't remember there being any serious internet before around 1997

There was serious internet well before then - it was frivolous internet which wasn't so apparent until after the inception of the WorldWideWeb.

People don't say it now, have you noticed?

I do remember hearing someone on the radio in about 2000 saying something like, ‘the internet will become so commonplace soon that we won’t have to say www. or .com’

I do remember hearing someone on the radio in about 2000 saying something like, ‘the internet will become so commonplace soon that we won’t have to say www. or .com’

Right about the www, wrong about the .com - get the domain wrong and you're on a totally different site.

http colon forward slash forward slash w w w

That's what people used to say

When i got my first mobile, text messages were really cheap, like 1-2p each. They soon went up to about 10p. When mobiles first started getting popular apparently the networks didn't think sms texts would be very popular but they soon were!

In 1998 I was on holiday on the other side of the world and trekked out to find an internet cafe so I could email my boyfriend (now husband!) much to the bemusement of my family...

I once tried to explain to DS about having no internet and absolutely no Google.

"No Google??? So how did you find stuff out??"

Not sure where I failed more, his lack of general knowledge/awareness or the appallingly constructed sentence.

I went on maternity leave in 1996 when l came back 12 weeks later all our basic computer terminals had internet. I was very confused. I remember in 1994 when l was on my first maternity leave all the TV .adverts starting to show web address. I managed to spend a gap year in 88 all over the world communicating home by letter and usings paper maps. My kids can't seem to get anywhere without Google maps and constant messages home with request s for help. It's nice having experience of world without internet. But l do love it now it's here.