What do you miss from before the Internet came?

[TadW]

Unless you were born in the Internet Age, you probably remember, as I do, the days when it was okay to be bored. Once someone told me it's very important to be bored in order to learn more about yourself and discover new things.

Not trying to be a luddite (I sleep with my smartphone, that's how much I love it), but I do vagely remember how I enjoyed going to music stores browsing through CDs. How I took pleasure in renting a video tape for the weekend, in writing handwritten letters, spontaneously meeting people face-to-face, playing boardgames, even being a bit bored sometimes...

[3keleton]

I was born in the early nineties, so I've known the internet for most of my life. I always find it interesting to hear people discussing the things that they miss from before "the modern era", as I collect vinyl (though I do have a very modern turntable) and dedicate quite a lot of time and money to building armies for tabletop games. I go to board game meetings, "ghost hunts", comic book conventions... I know, I know, I'm probably glorifying the past.

[Cinisajoy]

I am sorry but I do not understand that word. I was born pre-internet and I was never bored. We had toys and books and games and outside.
We could be bored with one thing but we were not allowed to say we were bored.
Our mothers could find something for us to do. (Not fun)
Now I did get bored once when we were moving my great grandmother. My grandparents took me to the nearest store and got me a paint by number to do for the new house.

Do I miss anything from back then? No because it is still all there. One just has to turn off the devices.
What I don't miss is the having to find information. Now that is almost instantaneous.
Ok with the exception of in the middle of a storm, when the weather stations went down.

[conan50]

Technology has brought many good things, but I miss the anonymity. If you have anything to do with the Internet today your privacy is gone, and that is only getting worse. Young people will not know what it is to be completely free of monitoring with today's technology and the Internet.

[FizzyWater]

Miss....I might wax nostalgic about used record stores and stacks of paperbacks and playing cards (for playing solitaire), but I'm not sure I miss them.

On the other hand, I do miss my figure. Before I bought a computer and discovered the internet, I used to go outside and do things like take walks! Maybe I had to re-arrange my entire paperback to collection to squeeze some new entries into the correct alphabetic and genre sequence.

As a corollary, I miss the idea that if we had a family gathering, the younger members of the family were actually expected to part of them, rather than sulking in a corner and texting away on their cellphones/tablets. (Of course, a flipside to that is, if I want to know what my niece is doing at any given moment except when she's in bed, all I have to do is check her Facebook page!)

[poohbear_nc]

The IBM Selectric II typewriter - that I once considered the 'apex' of technological advancement ....

The only typewriter that I couldn't out-type (and jam the keys) .... or in this case, the roller ball ....

[FizzyWater]

Do you truly miss it, or are you just nostalgic? Would you want to go back to a day when you needed a physical product (e.g., White-Out) to fix typos?

ETA - does anyone remember sniffing the earlier versions of White-Out that would give you a little high?? Not sure I actually miss that, though.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Do you truly miss it, or are you just nostalgic? Would you want to go back to a day when you needed a physical product (e.g., White-Out) to fix typos?

ETA - does anyone remember sniffing the earlier versions of White-Out that would give you a little high?? Not sure I actually miss that, though.

Well, yes -- it had that unique keyboard of rounded keys with a definite physical push/click when pressed.

Besides, it was the first typewriter to host the roll of 'lift-off' tape right next to the ribbon! No White-Out for me!

[darryl]

Absoloutely nothing! The internet is much better than sliced bread!

[rhadin]

I miss the face-to-face social interaction and that people actually looked you in the eye when speaking. Today, communication is by twitting -- even when the person you are twitting is just 50 feet away. Today meeting someone to date is filling out online profiles and hoping that those you read were honestly created. I much prefer having been "introduced by my cousin to this single woman he knows" at a face-to-face social gathering.

I also miss the idea of the neighborhood kids gathering after school at the local field for a pickup game of baseball. Now they rush home to play some online game by themselves or if with others, with anonymous others.

I miss the civility that came with in-person face-to-face social interactions. I think much of the polarization in today's world has come about because those with different ideas are not "real" to us. We never meet them, we never socialize with them, we never get the opportunity to view the world through their eyes.

The internet has made society cold and indifferent, it has hardened views.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I think much of the polarization in today's world has come about because those with different ideas are not "real" to us. We never meet them, we never socialize with them, we never get the opportunity to view the world through their eyes.

This convinced me that it is more about increasing geographical isolation than the Internet:

http://www.thebigsort.com/home.php

However, it could be that one is reinforcing the other. The same people who are moving to American neighborhoods where people are politically similar may be getting their news from partisan web sites or television networks.

Just to point out the obvious: Mobileread is the internet, and there is a ethic here to avoid turning issues into political left vs. right.

[unboggling]

I miss, from before the internet, the certainty and simplicity of beliefs. For example the political spectrum of left or right was simple, bipolar. Now reflections of reality distributed on the internet force more people (than before the internet) to broaden towards multi-spectrum/multi-dimensional beliefs that do not fit into the old bipolar boxes enforced by the entrenched-in-boxes people, such as the box of the left-right political spectrum, with resultant cognitive dissonances.

My cognitive dissonances were fewer before the internet.