@onlymythoughts 4 March 2021 edited more from that month

Life before the internet

A long time ago, way back in the 1980's life was very different that it is today. Not only was the internet not in use but people didn't even have mobile phones! Can you imagine how difficult it was to keep in touch! You would have to use a landline and hope that the person you were calling was at home. Most people only had one television set and there were only 3 channels and they were not even on 24hrs a day!

If we wanted to watch a film we would have to go to the cinema and watch it, we didn't have Netflix even, I don't know how we coped. I remember that when I got my first computer I was so excited! It was a BBC micro with an 32k memory. I think even a pocket calculator today would have more processing power. If we wanted to play a game we had to buy cassette put it in a tape player and plug that into the computer. It would take sometimes more than 5 minutes to load. Life was very different then. If we wanted to listen to music we would either have to tune in to the radio or go out and buy the record for ourselves, we did not even have Spotify or Youtube! Can you imagine what it was like for us? I mean at school it was so tough, if we needed to research a topic we would have to physically go to the library and see if we could find a book on the subject, we couldn't even look things up on Google!

Actually to be honest with you it wasn't all that bad, we didn't know any different in fact in many ways life seemed better than it is today. Young people would go out and they would talk to one another and interact more in person. Life was more simple, kids used to play outside a lot more, they were not always on a games console or staring at a mobile phone screen.

Our garden fences were lower and we would talk to our neighbours if we were out in the garden. I mean, we are really much more connected than we ever were at anytime in history but we interact so much online or through social media that I think in some ways we have forgotten how to interact with people in the real world. I guess that the internet age and modern technology does have some advantages, I mean how would we have coped in the current pandemic without it? They world is a very different place today than it was 40 years ago. Times have changed, but for better or worse? I wonder what you think? My own article Pictures courtesy of pixabay