Life Before the Internet

What was life like before the internet?

I think that people had more free time before the internet. Days were longer, more time was spent with family. Well, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Days were never actually more than 24 hours, and people didn’t really have an abundance of free time. It just felt that way since our attention wasn’t so divided.

For many of us today, we’ll be the last generation that can answer that question firsthand. The internet has added value to our lives and changed the world in so many ways. Many aspects of daily life have drastically changed since the internet was developed.

Take the field of genealogy as an example. In the past, you’d have to travel across the world to research your roots. People would write letters, they’d sit in libraries, museums, archives, and spend hours poring over microfilms. Since the advent of the internet, researching your family history has never been easier. MyHeritage and other genealogy sites do much of the work for you and allow you to search through billions of records from the comfort of your own home.

Do you remember the early days of the World Wide Web? My father is a computer engineer. Growing up, he was always one step ahead of others when it came to technology. He always had the latest gadgets and looked out for the next big thing. I remember him waiting in line for hours to get a good deal on the latest cassette deck, filled with as many features as possible. It was natural to us that we were one of the first families in the neighborhood to be connected to the World Wide Web.

We started with dial-up Internet. We only had one phone line, and we’d have to call up from the basement office to make sure that every family member knew not to pick up the phone. We would wait patiently as that familiar tone chimed, letting us know that the dial-up modem was establishing a telephone connection. The connection was quite slow, and we had to be very patient, but we didn’t know the internet in any other way. We later installed a second phone line, designated for internet use. To me, that’s when the internet changed from something fun to use to something we simply couldn’t live without. Every school project began with online research. We used the internet to search for answers to every question. And we’ve never looked back…

How has your life changed because of the Internet? Do you remember when your family first connected to the Internet? Let us know in the comments below!