5 ms·

Get ready to hear more about "pre-internet" times

23 points by ecliptik 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> There's mounting fascination among the "youngs" in how people socialized, found where they were going, and got things done before the mid-1990s, when the internet, email and mobile phones started becoming common. Mostly badly. I remember the thrill of printing MapQuest directions and if you missed an exit, your passenger then had to pull maps out of the glove compartment and start comparing them and the directions to find out the easiest way to return to your route. And hell, that was after MapQuest which in itself is Internet-based. I also recall vaguely being a kiddo when we would do family road trips, and my grandpa would navigate in the passenger seat with 2 or 3 different maps on his lap, switching between them as needed for a better look at wherever we were going. I also remember my last truly "analog" friendships were in an apartment complex I lived at before we moved elsewhere and got our first internet connection. I have no earthly idea where any of those people are today, hell I don't even remember the school that well. We basically never "arranged" anything, and I mean, it's not like we were incapable, but we had no ways of contacting one another outside of when we'd meet at school or the bus stop. If a friend of yours was sick at home, you just didn't know what was happening with them for that day at all. Or, hell, if someone moved, unless they announced it ahead of time, that person who you might've been deeply acquainted with just vanished from the world one day, or over one particular summer. Even as someone who technically spent the vast majority of their childhood without much technology, I don't recall really having many friendships until my first email account and later, flip phone with SMS enabled some manner of autonomous communication for me. Not sure if that's everyone's experience but it was certainly mine.
- wrayjustin 3y ago
  You're certainly right about the maps. And even with printed "turn-by-turn" directions, people got lost constantly. But, I will say that the younger "GPS-only" generation seems to be significantly worse at Land Navigation. Reading maps to navigate meant you had to be good-enough with cardinal directions, etc. Those who have always followed the voice guide on their phone seem to struggle even pointing north, let alone determining which way to go.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    It's very strange to me how averse people are to missing their exits now, too. I don't know if this is just because of the proliferation of dash cams, but it seems you see a lot more people now who slam on the brakes and turn around or reverse on motorways to recover their route, when the GPS they are almost certainly using will re-route them to an alternate way to get wherever they're going with literally no effort on their part.
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      No one likes the "re-routing" as there's no notification if it's going to route them a longer destination. Which is potentially yes. But who hasn't gone "shit!" when they've missed their turn off? So rather than, back-up take chance in avoiding a pile-up and take the original exit.
      - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        The risk/reward of that to me is just ludicrous though. I consider myself pretty damn open minded but I cannot imagine taking that kind of risk to avoid something so utterly benign as being late.
        doublerabbit 3y ago
        For the record, I'm not saying I do either; hell no. In case anyone thinks I do. My reply was how I would imangine of how those who do such dangerouse manoeuvers. Then again, people don't think and that includes using signal indicators.
      - galdosdi 3y ago
        I think it also is a skill issue. People who are used to driving and navigating have more of a mental model of how the roads connect up, and can often correct an error without needing a GPS to explain how to reroute. For example, in much of the country (less so in dense old urban areas) a lot of highway exits are "diamond interchanges" so it is trivial to, at any exit, get back on at the same exit going in either direction. In general a good driver is pretty aware of stuff like this, especially in their home areas, so already has a pretty good idea of what to do if they miss an exit. I think starting out GPS-based rather than starting without it and graduating to it eventually, is a big mistake, as it encourages this kind of stressful thinking because navigation is totally outsourced. I speak from experience -- I'm an older millenial but nevertheless started driving with GPS because I never started driving till my mid 20s. My first couple drives, in NYC, were in retrospect very dangerous to myself and to others, as my attention was divided between the GPS and basic skills like lane maintenance. To this day I'm always so much more comfortable partly memorizing or really just reviewing the rough outline of the route on the GPS while parked before starting the trip. It just feels good for the GPS to truly remain what it should be -- an assistant, not a master.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Basically everything until the "algorithm" and "infinite scroll" together in classic chaos theory fashion destroyed civilization.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  Right as I was starting to drive MapQuest was a thing. My dad had a 3rd-party GPS unit for his car but I only rarely got to use it. To save paper/ink I’d only print out the instructions to get to the place I was going and then reverse them to get home (many times I made the wrong turn and had to backtrack till I found something that was on my directions to reorient myself). I drove to a lot of random places while working for my parents (real estate agents, I took pictures, installed/collected lock boxes and signs, virtual tours, etc). Nowadays I’m completely dependent on my GPS but I don’t see that as a bad thing really. I know some people do, but it’s not a skill I need, why would I bother learning the route? I’m good at quick math and especially at getting “close to” (calculating a sale price, tip, etc) the right answer but I haven’t honed my long division skills in decades (I assume I could still do it, I know the method) because I have a calculator in my pocket always. In the same vein I don’t know assembly, heck I found EE to be boring as hell, I don’t care about logic gates but I can write software without issue. Every generation stands on the shoulders of the ones that came before and it seems like every older generation hates the younger for doing so. It’s honestly tiring and reeks of “If I had to put up with X then so do you”. This is not aimed at your comment, just a general observation.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
My parents were quite cautious drivers, and they did practically everything very locally, and often eschewed freeways if it were at all possible for their routes. My father kept a meticulous log of mileage and gasoline fill-ups in a pocket notebook that stayed in his car's center console. If we filled the tank but didn't update the notes, we'd catch hell for it. Another indispensable auto accessory was the Thomas Guide. We had Thomas Guide maps for every conceivable nook and cranny of our extended metropolitan area, and also for places we nearly never traveled. And I loved these books. They had such layers of meaning in the colors and symbols. You could literally get lost among the pages and learn so much about your local topology, in terms of streets and roads and blocks. So it was nigh-impossible for me to get lost, even as a novice teen driver, when that Thomas Guide was right in a seat pocket. I absolutely never needed to ask directions. I usually planned out trips in advance, especially the unfamiliar locales; it was easy to pinpoint a destination in Thomas Guide and then work towards it. The interesting thing is that I was also a rather local motorist and there were many, many parts of the city where I never learned the streets, because I had no reason to drive there. Contrast that with the place where I live today: we've got an incredibly rigorous grid system with predictable numbering, and so if you show me an arbitrary address, I can tell you exactly what the cross-street and region it's in and give directions, without even glancing at cartographic aids.
woutersf 3y ago
Before internet times I had a girlfiend that i often called. That was our main connection. After our breakup(dont remember how that happened) I lost her number and forgot her last name. She could be dead and I wouldn’t know.
- pests 3y ago
  It's sad, but a fate every human has to deal with. Our modern communication allows us to keep in touch much easier. In the not too distant past, it was very easy to lose all contact with friends and family and go decades before reconnecting.
themadturk 3y ago
I was born in 1955, so I was around 40 when the Internet became a thing for everyday people (however, I was very much online before that...BBSs, CompuServe, QuantumLink, even exchanging email via UUCP). We still have a Thomas Guide on our bookshelf. Just in case Apple Maps goes away. This article doesn't mention carrying around paper planners, pocket calendars or little paper phone books, but Daytimers were a big thing when I was in college, followed by Filofaxes a few years later. For finding things to do, there were community bulletin boards...literally cork boards you could pin a flyer about your event to. They were in grocery stores, coffee shops, etc. And telephone poles in heavily-trafficked areas were often covered with flyers for concerts, lectures, rallies, and babysitting opportunities, among other things. A lot of organizations had phone trees, where a group of people called a few other people, who called a few other people, etc. Churches were (and in many cases still are) major community hubs, not only for members of their congregations but for other community groups that used their facilities. Also, since newspapers were ubiquitous, community calendar columns and classified ads (anyone remember those?) were very common. You got to know people through things you did...school, church, work, neighbors, extended family. There were a lot of fraternal organizations, especially for men, like the Elks and Moose lodges (these really expanded after WW2, and shrank as that generation started to die off). My dad's best friend for decades was the fellow he partnered with in the late 1950s-early 1960s to write one of Boeing's first computerized accounting systems; their kids were almost like cousins to us. The now-lost art of letter writing was a big deal as well. I wrote to a cousin quite a bit, but I also spent time with a girl my age at a state park one summer, and we exchanged letters several times a year for around a decade. Finally, if you were bored standing in line waiting for something...that's what paperback books were for.
onecommentman 3y ago
There should be a lot more discussions of preInternet times by/for the young folks (<40 y.o.). Those of us on the bleeding edge of IT who also lived over half our lives in the “before days” naturally kept the best parts of preInternet culture while picking up those particular elements of digital culture that are (nearly) an absolute Good (and skipped the rest). The digital natives never knew the “before time”, and so need to make the same conscious effort to learn and integrate those preInternet wisdoms, as their forebears had made when learning digital technologies. Those preInternet lifeways are only deprecated if you tell yourselves they are deprecated. You’d be amazed how backwards compatible your 2023 life can actually be, with a little tweaking here and there. Might be worth the effort.

23 points by ecliptik 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

> There's mounting fascination among the "youngs" in how people socialized, found where they were going, and got things done before the mid-1990s, when the internet, email and mobile phones started becoming common. Mostly badly. I remember the thrill of printing MapQuest directions and if you missed an exit, your passenger then had to pull maps out of the glove compartment and start comparing them and the directions to find out the easiest way to return to your route. And hell, that was after MapQuest which in itself is Internet-based. I also recall vaguely being a kiddo when we would do family road trips, and my grandpa would navigate in the passenger seat with 2 or 3 different maps on his lap, switching between them as needed for a better look at wherever we were going. I also remember my last truly "analog" friendships were in an apartment complex I lived at before we moved elsewhere and got our first internet connection. I have no earthly idea where any of those people are today, hell I don't even remember the school that well. We basically never "arranged" anything, and I mean, it's not like we were incapable, but we had no ways of contacting one another outside of when we'd meet at school or the bus stop. If a friend of yours was sick at home, you just didn't know what was happening with them for that day at all. Or, hell, if someone moved, unless they announced it ahead of time, that person who you might've been deeply acquainted with just vanished from the world one day, or over one particular summer. Even as someone who technically spent the vast majority of their childhood without much technology, I don't recall really having many friendships until my first email account and later, flip phone with SMS enabled some manner of autonomous communication for me. Not sure if that's everyone's experience but it was certainly mine.

wrayjustin 3y ago
You're certainly right about the maps. And even with printed "turn-by-turn" directions, people got lost constantly. But, I will say that the younger "GPS-only" generation seems to be significantly worse at Land Navigation. Reading maps to navigate meant you had to be good-enough with cardinal directions, etc. Those who have always followed the voice guide on their phone seem to struggle even pointing north, let alone determining which way to go.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  It's very strange to me how averse people are to missing their exits now, too. I don't know if this is just because of the proliferation of dash cams, but it seems you see a lot more people now who slam on the brakes and turn around or reverse on motorways to recover their route, when the GPS they are almost certainly using will re-route them to an alternate way to get wherever they're going with literally no effort on their part.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    No one likes the "re-routing" as there's no notification if it's going to route them a longer destination. Which is potentially yes. But who hasn't gone "shit!" when they've missed their turn off? So rather than, back-up take chance in avoiding a pile-up and take the original exit.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      The risk/reward of that to me is just ludicrous though. I consider myself pretty damn open minded but I cannot imagine taking that kind of risk to avoid something so utterly benign as being late.
      - doublerabbit 3y ago
        For the record, I'm not saying I do either; hell no. In case anyone thinks I do. My reply was how I would imangine of how those who do such dangerouse manoeuvers. Then again, people don't think and that includes using signal indicators.
    - galdosdi 3y ago
      I think it also is a skill issue. People who are used to driving and navigating have more of a mental model of how the roads connect up, and can often correct an error without needing a GPS to explain how to reroute. For example, in much of the country (less so in dense old urban areas) a lot of highway exits are "diamond interchanges" so it is trivial to, at any exit, get back on at the same exit going in either direction. In general a good driver is pretty aware of stuff like this, especially in their home areas, so already has a pretty good idea of what to do if they miss an exit. I think starting out GPS-based rather than starting without it and graduating to it eventually, is a big mistake, as it encourages this kind of stressful thinking because navigation is totally outsourced. I speak from experience -- I'm an older millenial but nevertheless started driving with GPS because I never started driving till my mid 20s. My first couple drives, in NYC, were in retrospect very dangerous to myself and to others, as my attention was divided between the GPS and basic skills like lane maintenance. To this day I'm always so much more comfortable partly memorizing or really just reviewing the rough outline of the route on the GPS while parked before starting the trip. It just feels good for the GPS to truly remain what it should be -- an assistant, not a master.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Basically everything until the "algorithm" and "infinite scroll" together in classic chaos theory fashion destroyed civilization.
joshstrange 3y ago
Right as I was starting to drive MapQuest was a thing. My dad had a 3rd-party GPS unit for his car but I only rarely got to use it. To save paper/ink I’d only print out the instructions to get to the place I was going and then reverse them to get home (many times I made the wrong turn and had to backtrack till I found something that was on my directions to reorient myself). I drove to a lot of random places while working for my parents (real estate agents, I took pictures, installed/collected lock boxes and signs, virtual tours, etc). Nowadays I’m completely dependent on my GPS but I don’t see that as a bad thing really. I know some people do, but it’s not a skill I need, why would I bother learning the route? I’m good at quick math and especially at getting “close to” (calculating a sale price, tip, etc) the right answer but I haven’t honed my long division skills in decades (I assume I could still do it, I know the method) because I have a calculator in my pocket always. In the same vein I don’t know assembly, heck I found EE to be boring as hell, I don’t care about logic gates but I can write software without issue. Every generation stands on the shoulders of the ones that came before and it seems like every older generation hates the younger for doing so. It’s honestly tiring and reeks of “If I had to put up with X then so do you”. This is not aimed at your comment, just a general observation.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

My parents were quite cautious drivers, and they did practically everything very locally, and often eschewed freeways if it were at all possible for their routes. My father kept a meticulous log of mileage and gasoline fill-ups in a pocket notebook that stayed in his car's center console. If we filled the tank but didn't update the notes, we'd catch hell for it. Another indispensable auto accessory was the Thomas Guide. We had Thomas Guide maps for every conceivable nook and cranny of our extended metropolitan area, and also for places we nearly never traveled. And I loved these books. They had such layers of meaning in the colors and symbols. You could literally get lost among the pages and learn so much about your local topology, in terms of streets and roads and blocks. So it was nigh-impossible for me to get lost, even as a novice teen driver, when that Thomas Guide was right in a seat pocket. I absolutely never needed to ask directions. I usually planned out trips in advance, especially the unfamiliar locales; it was easy to pinpoint a destination in Thomas Guide and then work towards it. The interesting thing is that I was also a rather local motorist and there were many, many parts of the city where I never learned the streets, because I had no reason to drive there. Contrast that with the place where I live today: we've got an incredibly rigorous grid system with predictable numbering, and so if you show me an arbitrary address, I can tell you exactly what the cross-street and region it's in and give directions, without even glancing at cartographic aids.

woutersf 3y ago

Before internet times I had a girlfiend that i often called. That was our main connection. After our breakup(dont remember how that happened) I lost her number and forgot her last name. She could be dead and I wouldn’t know.

pests 3y ago
It's sad, but a fate every human has to deal with. Our modern communication allows us to keep in touch much easier. In the not too distant past, it was very easy to lose all contact with friends and family and go decades before reconnecting.

themadturk 3y ago

I was born in 1955, so I was around 40 when the Internet became a thing for everyday people (however, I was very much online before that...BBSs, CompuServe, QuantumLink, even exchanging email via UUCP). We still have a Thomas Guide on our bookshelf. Just in case Apple Maps goes away. This article doesn't mention carrying around paper planners, pocket calendars or little paper phone books, but Daytimers were a big thing when I was in college, followed by Filofaxes a few years later. For finding things to do, there were community bulletin boards...literally cork boards you could pin a flyer about your event to. They were in grocery stores, coffee shops, etc. And telephone poles in heavily-trafficked areas were often covered with flyers for concerts, lectures, rallies, and babysitting opportunities, among other things. A lot of organizations had phone trees, where a group of people called a few other people, who called a few other people, etc. Churches were (and in many cases still are) major community hubs, not only for members of their congregations but for other community groups that used their facilities. Also, since newspapers were ubiquitous, community calendar columns and classified ads (anyone remember those?) were very common. You got to know people through things you did...school, church, work, neighbors, extended family. There were a lot of fraternal organizations, especially for men, like the Elks and Moose lodges (these really expanded after WW2, and shrank as that generation started to die off). My dad's best friend for decades was the fellow he partnered with in the late 1950s-early 1960s to write one of Boeing's first computerized accounting systems; their kids were almost like cousins to us. The now-lost art of letter writing was a big deal as well. I wrote to a cousin quite a bit, but I also spent time with a girl my age at a state park one summer, and we exchanged letters several times a year for around a decade. Finally, if you were bored standing in line waiting for something...that's what paperback books were for.

onecommentman 3y ago

There should be a lot more discussions of preInternet times by/for the young folks (<40 y.o.). Those of us on the bleeding edge of IT who also lived over half our lives in the “before days” naturally kept the best parts of preInternet culture while picking up those particular elements of digital culture that are (nearly) an absolute Good (and skipped the rest). The digital natives never knew the “before time”, and so need to make the same conscious effort to learn and integrate those preInternet wisdoms, as their forebears had made when learning digital technologies. Those preInternet lifeways are only deprecated if you tell yourselves they are deprecated. You’d be amazed how backwards compatible your 2023 life can actually be, with a little tweaking here and there. Might be worth the effort.