Imagine...........there was no internet

I often wish we would get a Deus Ex moment where all communications systems are destroyed and the world is plunged into the Dark Ages. Everyone has to rely on word of mouth or letters for news/events. There is no TV, no radio, no phones, no Internet.
 
ic1male said:
I often wish we would get a Deus Ex moment where all communications systems are destroyed and the world is plunged into the Dark Ages. Everyone has to rely on word of mouth or letters for news/events. There is no TV, no radio, no phones, no Internet.
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i tried this for a day. I said today Im not going to use anythign electrical for entertainment. I played the acoustic guitar for a bit, went for a jog/walk and then..........I was bored. lol.

Guess you need freinds and stuff like board games, chess, sports etc...card games, dominos etc...

read a book.


I like my video games and tv stimulation
 
Also if there was no internet porn would more girls actually be attractive.

That internet porn really raised the barre for me. AFter some time with the virtual sex I found the girls in the ''real'' world werent quite up to scratch.
Or mayeb im just fussy
 
I remember when the only way you got games for your computer was to buy magazines and type the code in by hand. I remember using a 300 bit per second modem to access bulletin boards (before the internet spread outside into the mainstream, forums like this one would be hosted at places you could dial into directly). I remember the internet before Google. I remember when Wikipedia was new and most people thought it would never work.

I think the biggest change is the ease of access to information. Finding something you didn't know out was a real chore back in the day, now there's vast reams of information just a google search away and a whole load of places where you can ask knowledgeable and helpful people how to do things.
 
I'm only 25 but I was into computing at a very young age. I can remember not having the internet and the main source for information in school was the library. I can recall a few Windows 3.1 machines in there that we used mainly for Encarta!

I remember our first computer was some 186 MS-DOS thing, I used to mess around in QBASIC programming really basic apps with mainly PRINT and IF statements, etc. lol. I was lucky as my Dad was starting to get into them as well so he bought a Windows 95 based machine and AOL, iirc this was then followed by CompuServe. Those were the days of Netscape Navigator. Ridiculously basic HTML websites using text, marquees, horizontal lines, frames and low res background images and gifs. My main search engine was Yahoo and Astalavista. Hotmail was not owed by Microsoft. My mates and I use to spend a lot of time in school messing around in chat rooms.

Me and a couple of mates use to play Doom and Quake on dial-up. We use to share mad little C programs in school like that Coca Cola gift application claiming to offer you a free bottle holder, clicking OK would simply open your CD drive. Floppy disks were the most temperamental things ever. We use to buy transparent ones from a high street store called Byte I believe, this was before PC World was mainstream iirc.
 
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Ah the early internet - something new and amazing and yet at the same time painfully slow, highly temperamental and incredibly frustrating!

There's no way anyone now would have that level of patience any more. So used to everything being on demand. Hardware that (mostly) works without issue, applications that rarely ever crash and information that's available within seconds.

Compare that to the early days, where downloading mp3s could easily take a few hours, especially when you factored in the periodic disconnects, crashes, reboots, etc. Nothing like waiting ages for a file to download, only to have the connection drop, or something crash. Download managers, which allowed partial downloads to be restarted, quickly became an essential tool.
 
I was online in 93 (via an unnameable govt. establishment) using a VT220 terminal and some copper wire which connected me at a staggering 150baud.... please dont make me go back to that! I also had a @hmg.gb email address.

I seem to recall the copper wire ran under our airfield and cut out when particular planes landed or took off throughout the day.
 
subtract internet.. add hdtv..

oh my, can you remember the days when we only had standard definition television?
or the days before digital broadcasting? when only a few people had sky, and everyone else only had 5 channels to choose from? or even, before channel 5, or... before Channel 4! And don't forget colour! oh I remember the day my father brought home our first colour tv..

That's the benefit of media.. it evolves..

Cars would be a good one too..
 
skyripper said:
I was online in 93 (via an unnameable govt. establishment) using a VT220 terminal and some copper wire which connected me at a staggering 150baud.... please dont make me go back to that! I also had a @hmg.gb email address.

I seem to recall the copper wire ran under our airfield and cut out when particular planes landed or took off throughout the day.
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been a while since I saw one of those.. mine was @atc.dra.hmg.gb
 
I can't imagine what it must be like growing up today and there always being the internet. It must be so useful for school work these days, but possibly also lends itself to cheating more?

For example a lot of language homework tended to be translating passages of text. These days, translation services can do all that for you. How do teachers go about stopping that from happening?

My parents also had Compuserve as their first ever internet provider. I seem to remember running up some hefty phone bills, as not only did you get charged for every minute you were connected to Compuserve, you also got charged for every minute with BT. When BT eventually went to free internet calls years later it was a milestone! Compuserve, much like it's main rival at the time AOL, were all about their own software version of the internet. I seem to remember you booted into their own program which had chatrooms, news, basic browser, mail etc.

It's probably one of those things when in old age you will turn to your Grandkids and say "In my day youth we didn't have internet!"
 
WingZero30 said:
Internet and mobile have revolutionised 21'st century particularly lifestyle fortunately and unfortunately.
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I agree... Whilst the technology is there to be enjoyed and more than useful at times it is a distraction for most and I'm no exception to that. I love the internet but it has it's downsides too. I should imagine that all company owners must loath it. The amount of business hours wasted on the internet must be staggering...

As for phones.. I'm still not convinced they make my life better as the major phone companies try and make us think... I do remember life without phones and as inconvenient as it may have been not to have been in constant touch with people it was never really a problem. People seem obsessive and distracted. People wandering around on their phones not looking where they are going is a favourite of mine.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
As for phones.. I'm still not convinced they make my life better as the major phone companies try and make us think... I do remember life without phones and as inconvenient as it may have been not to have been in constant touch with people it was never really a problem. People seem obsessive and distracted. People wandering around on their phones not looking where they are going is a favourite of mine.
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i got in a lift with a girl this morning, i was going to the third floor, she to the fifth - she was typing on BBM and walked out onto my floor with me - when she realised she was on the third floor and not the fifth - i smiled to myself as the lift door closed and went to another floor - she then had to take the stairs :p
 
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