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Before the internet, parents of children with rare diseases watched them die without a doctor ever believing them. Before the internet, gay kids committed suic
by jeffrallen 8y ago
Before the internet, parents of children with rare diseases watched them die without a doctor ever believing them.
Before the internet, gay kids committed suicide, never even knowing how they felt was normal for some other people far away from their small town.
Before the internet, if your county library didn't have it, it didn't exist.
Before the internet, you had 3 TV channels, and you watched what the advertisers would pay for, not what you were curious about.
- VirtualAirwaves 8y agoOh, please. I'm 56 years old and was gay before the internet. I didn't kill myself. And if my county library didn't have it, I went to the University library, or had the librarian do an inter-library load from other libraries in the State.
- cfmcdonald 8y agoYour earnest outrage is not really appropriate to the tone of the article. Did you see the part about crow telephathy?
- rdiddly 8y agoI mean, if we're going to go this route, then, after the internet, gay kids commit suicide because strangers far away can now bully them.
- greenyoda 8y ago> Before the internet, if your county library didn't have it, it didn't exist. Inter-library loans existed long before the internet. > Before the internet, you had 3 TV channels, and you watched what the advertisers would pay for, not what you were curious about. Cable TV with lots of channels existed long before streaming video was available on the web. Also, you could rent videos at Blockbuster (or borrow them for free at the local library). And you had ad-free public TV stations.
- robbrown451 8y agoI've never done an interlibrary loan. Obviously, some did, but still. Cable and video rentals weren't available till I was in college. You're right that some of these things became available in limited quantities, or were available with a lot of effort, but overall the gist of what OP said captures the idea. Things are very different from when I grew up in the 70s/early 80s.
- mirimir 8y ago> Inter-library loans existed long before the internet. And used bookstores. I loved those. You could find anything.
- nine_k 8y agoYou could find anything, but mostly by chance. Looking for a particular thing was hard. And, of course, you had to allocate 2-3 hours for the adventure, and traveling there and back again.
- mirimir 8y agoSure, but people spend at least that much time browsing random stuff. Also, many stores did organize their collections, at least somewhat. When I was ~13, discovering New York City, I found a copy of Fortunes in Formulas for Home, Farm, and Workshop. And an ad in a comic book for a chemical company in Texas that sold fireworks supplies. Years of fun followed.
- agumonkey 8y agoI wonder how book search systems were used, surely large library indexes existed but how efficient and how often they'd be used.. In a way, book searching is probably the only cool thing about internet IMO. The rest was already nice enough as it was. You don't need ultra high bandwidth and ultra low latency to find a VHS for a night with friends... it won't make the memories better.
- asark 8y ago
- NegatioN 8y agoI'm going to assume you're honestly sticking up for the internet. I don't think this piece is contradicting to the fact the internet has brought lots of good things as well, especially in when it comes to making information accessible and easy to use/copy etc. But it's pointing out that we also lost something in that process. Which sometimes can be hard to put a finger on, seeing as it's mostly about letting ourselves be bored, letting ourself be inspired from something within.