I always feel like this when I remember the world before the Internet took over. I was born in 1983, and while the Internet/computers first started throwing weight around when I was like twelve or thirteen, they weren't ubiquitous (at least not for me and mine in Ohio) until the end of high school/turn of the century. We did a lot online, messaging and boards and whatever, but we didn't do *everything*, computing more a leisure activity, something to do, a place to go, after the actual work was done. And back before the mid-90s, there wasn't hardly anything there at all, no broader connectivity, non-professional computers closed spaces for gaming and learning and word processing and whatever else, but not everything. Far from everything. Just another thing. I'm not making a value judgment, not necessarily, because I know there was so much heinous shit going on back then that nobody heard about and now we hear about it and that is unquestionably better, both for the people going through that heinous shit, that they might not have to go through it anymore, and for the rest us, when it comes to understanding our world and the forces at work within it. But there was an analog time before this digital one, and it wasn't even that long ago, and things *were* different. Substantially so. And that freaks me the fuck out about what might be coming next, once the last of us who remembers finally shuffles off. I had to get a new car a couple years ago, and I had to get one with satellite radio and full connectivity with my phone but without a CD player. I was crushed.
I always feel like this when I remember the world before the Internet took over. I was born in 1983, and while the Internet/computers first started throwing weight around when I was like twelve or thirteen, they weren't ubiquitous (at least not for me and mine in Ohio) until the end of high school/turn of the century. We did a lot online, messaging and boards and whatever, but we didn't do *everything*, computing more a leisure activity, something to do, a place to go, after the actual work was done. And back before the mid-90s, there wasn't hardly anything there at all, no broader connectivity, non-professional computers closed spaces for gaming and learning and word processing and whatever else, but not everything. Far from everything. Just another thing. I'm not making a value judgment, not necessarily, because I know there was so much heinous shit going on back then that nobody heard about and now we hear about it and that is unquestionably better, both for the people going through that heinous shit, that they might not have to go through it anymore, and for the rest us, when it comes to understanding our world and the forces at work within it. But there was an analog time before this digital one, and it wasn't even that long ago, and things *were* different. Substantially so. And that freaks me the fuck out about what might be coming next, once the last of us who remembers finally shuffles off. I had to get a new car a couple years ago, and I had to get one with satellite radio and full connectivity with my phone but without a CD player. I was crushed.