How did people spend their time pre-internet?

[pdoherty]

My understanding is that a phone line was expensive back then and people usually had 1 phone line. I do not assume it was normal to call your phone company and ask them for 10 phone lines just for your house.

True it probably did cost those people a bit to have multiple phone lines, but most had at most 2-3 numbers to connect to.

That was the cost of the hobby, I suppose. Heck, us users of BBS’s were coughing up hundreds for 1200, 2400 and later 9600/14400 bps modems to be able to connect.

 

[MacBH928]

So many good memories in this thread! I think most things boiled down to the freedom to experiment with whatever we wanted to try. Of course there were piano lessons, art classes at the local school, swimming lessons, model building, card games, normal chores at home e.g., dishes, trash, pet care. But what I cherish most was the ability to leave home on my bike with my friends and spend time at the swimming pool, hanging out at the local park or at one of our houses in the basement, eating a meal with a friends family or at my house, slumber parties, babysitting for some money, spending the day at a friend's family farm, exploring new construction sites, and small paying jobs provided by parents when we would stop by their place of work. The world was full of opportunities and exploring those opportunities. We were never bored and really learned to function in the world with those broad experiences. We talked on the land line to friends, but it was only after our parents answered the phone and knew who we were talking to. Pretty much everyone in our area knew whose kids were who and what they were doing so we didn't get into any serious trouble. Even as teenagers we loved to "cruise" up and down the main drag or hang out at the local A&W Drive-In. Nearly everyone had extracurricular activities that took up non-school time during the school year whether it was sports, putting on plays, musicals, playing in the band or orchestra, debate club etc. There was only one TV in the house that got 3 channels with rabbit ears so if anyone wanted to watch a movie, it was at a certain time with the whole family. We all learned to cook, sew clothing, do yard work, do minor house repairs, and keep the ONE family car maintained. Even as a teen, the only kids that had their own cars were farm kids who had trucks.....most with rifles in the back and not locked, ever. Many of those boys would go hunting after school and sports practice. Finally, I have to say that the dominant, and much beloved technology was AM Radio and Records. Pretty much every fun thing we did included transistor radios and/or taking our personal records to parties to share. We all loved music, much as we do today, but only had access to what we purchased. As much as I love new tech, AI, etc. I have to say that our childhood was much richer and prepared us better for real life.

Thank you for this. Everything you said is so true of what I remember especially the part about extracurricular activities that was supposed to fill teenagers free time. That and the 1 car thing, everyone forgets that. IDK why people today have more cars than before. You nailed it with this post.

Although at that time there was a lot of exploration, one thing I do not miss is lack of knowledge. Today anything you need to get done you can easily look it up online. Prior to that, you simply could not do it. I fixed cars, completed videogames, cooked, did home improvements, fixed computer errors...etc all by looking it up online with pictures and video explaination. If I was in the 80s I wouldn't been able to have done all of this. Prior to the internet there was a lot of "myths" on how to get things done, of the things I remember that if you wanted sweet corn you should boil it in 7up and if you boil a coin that looks like this the yellow ring will split apart from the silver circle. I still do not know if those two are real or not 😆

 

[mortlocli]

Thank you for this. Everything you said is so true of what I remember especially the part about extracurricular activities that was supposed to fill teenagers free time. That and the 1 car thing, everyone forgets that. IDK why people today have more cars than before. You nailed it with this post.

Although at that time there was a lot of exploration, one thing I do not miss is lack of knowledge. Today anything you need to get done you can easily look it up online. Prior to that, you simply could not do it. I fixed cars, completed videogames, cooked, did home improvements, fixed computer errors...etc all by looking it up online with pictures and video explaination. If I was in the 80s I wouldn't been able to have done all of this. Prior to the internet there was a lot of "myths" on how to get things done, of the things I remember that if you wanted sweet corn you should boil it in 7up and if you boil a coin that looks like this the yellow ring will split apart from the silver circle. I still do not know if those two are real or not 😆

..actually I thought the 'myths' had increased substantially with the Internet ??

 

[BaErv]

I used to ride my Wooly Mammoth out across the tundra and occasionally see other people riding their Wooly Mammoths out across the tundra.

 

[LeeW]

It was a great time fro me pre-internet, I was young and at school. There were no mobiles, I remember our home telephone number was just 4 numbers (2791). The deal was simple, home by dark. We spend our days playing outside, exploring, mischief-making, but nothing serious.

We couldn't wait for the summer to come around, 6 weeks away from school we spent almost that entire 6 weeks outside. Up and out before 9am every morning and rarely home before dark. Amazing times!

it's painful to see children today rarely going outside...

 

[MacBH928]

IDK. From 12 years old to 26 years old I was rural. All my friends were 30 minutes away (by car), down the hill where the mall was.

Tech, when it got to me, made life in the sticks much richer and living in the sticks didn't much prepare me for city life.

I got out of that place in 1999 to live in a large metro city where everything (almost) is convenient. I will never return to that place or any other rural community as long as I have a say in the matter.

While I did a lot of things that you mention, I don't remember rural childhood life (outside of technology) quite as fondly as you do. A 15 minute bike ride to the store? 30-45 minutes back - UPHILL. And carrying your bag of groceries in one arm while you tried to handle the bike on gutted roads with the other.

When I got older I discovered the joys of rural government and just how corrupt and nepotistic they are. There's reasons some small communities stay small and it's because they try real hard to keep the outside world out.

I think the problem you have is not pre&post internet, but more of rural&metro life. Most of us here (I guess) lived in metro areas pre-internet so we didn't have to go through what you went. I can imagine how difficult it was for you, whats worse...imagine life a 100 years earlier than that. No bikes, no electricity, not even tap water!

The internet has a Jekyll/Hyde kind of thing going.

Yes, the internet has created a world of scams, misinformation and conspiracy theories. But it also created a more knowledgable populace (if you avoid the former stuff). When I was in high school and college in the late 80s, early 90s, when I wanted to write a paper or do research, I had to go to the (gasp!) library. A huge task for a lazy butt like me. Now my kids can look up all sorts of information (hopefully accurate), just sitting on their own butts.

I remember having to do a science fair project and I had like 0 place to get an idea or start something. That being said, I always believe gaining information the hard way (books+classes+hands one) make one retain it and have better quality knowledge over the sea of info+noise that goes in one's head today.

We access it faster, but it goes out of our brains as if our brains were RAM memories!

And more eyes!

Do you find more monitors make you more productive? I always thought I upgrade from my single 13 macbook screen to get things done over switching back and forth from one app to the other.

 

[MacBH928]

Honest question: did you read either of the links I posted, particularly the one about BBS’s?

The honest answer is no. I have been on the internet daily for hours for over 2 decades and am a computer aficionado if you may. I know what the internet is and what BBS is. I saw the full documentary. I just never had a hands on with one although I did successful log in to couples a few years back via telnet on my macos terminal.

 

[eyoungren]

I think the problem you have is not pre&post internet, but more of rural&metro life. Most of us here (I guess) lived in metro areas pre-internet so we didn't have to go through what you went. I can imagine how difficult it was for you, whats worse...imagine life a 100 years earlier than that. No bikes, no electricity, not even tap water!

There was a short period of time from 1980 to 1981 that we lived in a city. I can recall running around on bikes with the neighbors.

Before that I was little and while I did live in larger metro areas from the time I was a baby to mid 1980, that was all stuff you did as a little kid - not my teen years.

Do you find more monitors make you more productive? I always thought I upgrade from my single 13 macbook screen to get things done over switching back and forth from one app to the other.

It isn't about productivity for me, although it doesn't hurt. I simply prefer to have palettes and windows on screens other than my primary screens. That's something I picked up at the various jobs I've had and I took the idea home with me. I also prefer to watch videos or movies on the largest screen, so moving a window to the HDTV and maximizing it is what I do. It also allows others in the room to see.

Having two large primary screens means I can have one document on one display and one on another, or two instances of the same document on two screens. Either way it's just easier.

It's all about making things easier/better for me - not productivity.

 

[Huntn]

If you are old enough and remember I would like to hear your memories. I remember as far back as the early 1990s. I was thinking all forms of entertainment today is connected to the internet. I would imagine it would be very horrific to be lonely at that time period.

I know people who would go to work have something to be busy with but those who are retired, between jobs, what did they do all day long? What I remember was people almost never stayed home. Every day for them was go out and socialise day.

When I was a child 1950-60s timeframe, there was radio, TV, and movies, at the theater and on TV. Movies at the theater were incredible, almost like an alternate reality for a couple of hours. A local TVstation in the Washington DC area had a Tues and Thur night science fiction feature and I used to have to argue with my parents to let stay up past 9pm to watch all of the outstanding titles, like The Giant Behemoth, The Beast From 20,000 fathoms, The Thing from Another World, The Crawling Eye. The 1950s was a rich period for science fiction.

TV was the tech wonder, and I remember the neighbors letting me come over to watch a movie in color which was freaking amazing! Color TVs were very expensive when they first came out. I also had my first portable battery powered transistor radio which I could listen to in bed just before going to sleep. This was consumer cutting edge.

Besides this there were books, board games were huge, we had a pool table in the basement, a ping pong table that would sit on it, also we could swap that out with a race track platform with elect cars we could race.

Outside, friends and I would go on exploration adventures. we’d play war. In SE Washington DC up the hill from the neighborhood was a large field and an old folks home (The Rupert Home) that had a large slope for sledding in the winter, a field above it and a stretch of woods between Naylor Road and Minnesota Ave where great adventures could be had. That area is all developed now, I can’t even find a reference to the Rupert Home which aI thought would have been a historical building built around 1900.

As far as being alone, I’m in alignment with @Scepticalscribe on this. My personal social needs are very low. I like my own time where demands are not being made upon me.

If I was not married, I might seek 2 closer friends which was what where I was at when single, but honestly, the older I get, the less I like people in general, what pains in the asses they can be, but I might still go find a card game* at the local YMCA.

*Speaking of card games, circa pre-internet 1972, one of the major college dorm activities was card games. I played Pinochle, one step down from Bridge, outstanding social interaction!

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

I was a kid and was out playing sport in the evenings and weekends. We had the internet at home in 1995 which was cool as even my school didn’t have it. Back then the amount of websites was in the tens of thousands and it cost about £0.10 a minute so I could only go on it if I knew what I wanted to look up. It certainly was a lot simpler back then though and people actually phoned each other and did things more face to face lol.

 

[russell_314]

Well, as a kid I would ride my bike and play in the woods because I lived in the country. I’m not sure if that’s a pre Internet thing or living in the country thing. As a young adult, I would say perhaps the time I would spend on the Internet today would be time spent reading newspapers or watching TV. Today I avoid news like the plague because it’s mostly someone’s political opinion. Some TV interests me but cable TV is too expensive for the few shows I would watch. I can afford it but I would rather spend the money on something else. I know people that spend $200+ a month for cable. For that much money I could buy a MacBook Pro every year 😂

 

[eyoungren]

If I was not married, I might seek 2 closer friends which was what where I was at when single, but honestly, the older I get, the less I like people in general, what pains in the asses they can be, but I might still go find a card game* at the local YMCA.

I'm not there yet (I'm 52), but I do find certain 'types' of people irritate me. Over the years I have come to realize that most of the people I called 'friends' were simply acquaintances that for a time I shared common interests with. Only with my wife did I find something much deeper.

This is one of the reasons I stay connected and online. It's easy to find people online who share common interests. It's much more difficult to find those people in person where you live, especially if you don't get out much.

 

[eyoungren]

I know people that spend $200+ a month for cable.

I cut cable in late February. That was costing us around the price you mentioned. It's been a process adjusting to free services/apps, but at least I get my local news broadcasts. The only thing I really miss is the Weather Channel. But I don't see a point in subscribing to a service when ditching cable TV because of price was the entire point.

We do subscribe to three premium services, but that's because there are three particular shows I am interested in. I do have to say that in the last month and a half I've gotten more news about where I used to live 20+ years ago than I have in all that time. Just because that TV station is a 'free' channel.

I'd forgotten about all the car chases in Los Angeles broadcast live!

 

[dmr727]

I'd forgotten about all the car chases in Los Angeles broadcast live!

Ha! That's a blast from the past - I grew up in LA and we always joked about that.

 

[MacBH928]

My first involvement with the “internet” if that is the proper term was about 1986 when I joined Compuserve, was actually awarded my forum name there, in a CompuServe forum, and at the time it required a modem, a phone call and was charged by the minute. Working as a pilot at Northwest Airlines, we used to bid our monthly work schedule via Compuserve.

Connectivity was much less then, but what we see in the internet today is a natural development of human beings when given basically instant, convenient access to business, commercial, market place, entertainment, and many other things that interest us. We are goners!

I never understood what CompueServe/AOL/Prodigy was. I thought its ISP software that had some chatrooms and websites dedicated to it but this doesn't make sense pre-1993 since there was no websites before that.

Was it like a BBS software that everyone connected to to get information?

I realized I'm old because I remember when my Dad won a company raffle for new Coleco Vision home for Christmas in 1972! Suddenly in the neighborhood my older brother seem the most poplar kids then for couple of years playing duck hut and pong as well as others connected to my parents furniture TV (we also had the light pistol)!

The light pistol was pretty amazing. When I first heard of videogames we literally understood it as a game in video, so you played the video on the screen which is mind blowing as we were used to the fact that video is static on vhs tapes.

The cartridge was the "video" tape that you can play!

 

[MrCheeto]

I would imagine it would be very horrific to be lonely at that time period.

This is something I miss almost every day.

I remember that when the sun went down, you were alone. There was nobody and nothing to communicate with. Late-night radio shows and Paid Programming on TV had such a mystique. It was like listening in on a conversation from so far away and you couldn't join in.

I remember how creative I was on these nights and the energy I had.

I'm an obsessive when it comes to finding answers and solving puzzles. I'm often up after midnight Googling until my eyes are stinging because I simply can't sleep until I find the answers.

Plug that into the 90's when the most contact you had with the outside world was a phone and somebody on the other end had to pick up.

I remember all those nights of pouring through pages in every book on a subject, taping and gluing monstrosities of papers together, tabulating until my fingers ached, and worst of all: searching through every CD or Tape I had if I remembered the faintest part of a song and had to remember exactly what it was or the same for VHS tapes if I was trying to remember the name of an actor or where they appeared in a film.

Most of all, one could get to know their self. Without the static of modern technology, night-time was like tuning back into the earth.

I would trade everything the internet offers today to have the darkness back. Not for myself but for our society.

 

[eyoungren]

I never understood what CompueServe/AOL/Prodigy was. I thought its ISP software that had some chatrooms and websites dedicated to it but this doesn't make sense pre-1993 since there was no websites before that.

Was it like a BBS software that everyone connected to to get information?

Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL were the commercialization of the BBS. These were companies that had the money to afford either a lot of business lines or software/hardware that could mimmick that. The services allowed thousands of people to be online at once and they had servers to process all the data. But you had to pay for it.

You got email, chat, boards and groups and it was always available. The increasing popularity of the internet is what killed it. You could dialup to the internet and visit websites completely outside the service. People bailed on it for the internet at that point.

 

[BaErv]

I sorta had internet before there was internet. I was a FORTRAN programmer for the military working on the California Law Enforcement Telecommunication System in 1973-1974. Used a rotary dial-up 300 baud modem to send and receive keypunch tape that was transferred into a teletype machine...downloading porn was tough back in those days

 

[Apple fanboy]

There were a variety of activities people engaged in before the internet arrived. A few of these activities are as follows:

1. Reading books, newspapers, and magazines.
2. Watching television.
3. Listening to music.
4. Socializing.
5. Hobbies.
6. Sports and outdoor activities.
7. Work and household chores.

Most if not all of these still exist. But especially number 7. The internet didn’t make either of those go away!

 

[Apple fanboy]

Thats true. All these activities are still being followed but they have been drastically reduced. Nowadays, People barely read books, newspapers, or magazines, watch TV, listen to music, socialize, etc., without the help of the internet. Everything has become online. Also, I have been seeing kids these days only using phones and the internet. Rarely have I seen them play some outdoor activities or sports. Work has also become digital mostly, and manual labor has been reduced as technology has improved in such a way that it replaces much of it.

I’d agree on the physical newspapers and magazines for sure. Can’t remember reading a physical one in years. But reading them on the internet is essentially the same.
I listen to as much if not more music than I ever did. The internet did not stop that.
Definitely haven’t seen any reduction in work. Quite the opposite.

 

[okkibs]

Back in the 90s we used landline phones to hangout and talk just like we use the internet today. And we had computers of course, first it was games on floppy disks for the atari st, then CDs (morrowind cd boxset...).

Twitch and Discord and all these things nowadays are just bigger worldwide extensions of the idea that you have something you want to share and you call someone up and tell them about it.

 

[eyoungren]

There were a variety of activities people engaged in before the internet arrived. A few of these activities are as follows:

1. Reading books, newspapers, and magazines.
2. Watching television.
3. Listening to music.
4. Socializing.
5. Hobbies.
6. Sports and outdoor activities.
7. Work and household chores.

Number seven is a particular activity I went to great lengths to avoid, pre-internet.

Post-internet, this has not changed for me.

 

[eyoungren]

I’d agree on the physical newspapers and magazines for sure. Can’t remember reading a physical one in years. But reading them on the internet is essentially the same.
I listen to as much if not more music than I ever did. The internet did not stop that.
Definitely haven’t seen any reduction in work. Quite the opposite.

I gave up on newspapers about a decade ago or more. In my area, newspaper content is bad. You'll get paragraphs that dance around the topic and they finally address it in the last paragraph. Before giving up, I just used to skip to the end. I felt I was not getting the value of what I paid for my newspaper.

So, Google News, which is free became my replacement.

And yeah, 19 years of my graphic design career was in newspapers.

 

[Clix Pix]

Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL were the commercialization of the BBS. These were companies that had the money to afford either a lot of business lines or software/hardware that could mimmick that. The services allowed thousands of people to be online at once and they had servers to process all the data. But you had to pay for it.

You got email, chat, boards and groups and it was always available. The increasing popularity of the internet is what killed it. You could dialup to the internet and visit websites completely outside the service. People bailed on it for the internet at that point.

I think what really made the difference was the switch from solely text-based interfaces on the DOS platform to the graphics interface. We accessed and communicated on Usenet via text, and while there was a steady increase in activity as more and more people discovered it, IMHO the floodgates really opened when Windows 3.1 and its graphics interface came into use, in businesses and eventually in homes.

In the 1980's a few people had already begun purchasing computers for their homes but it was not yet widespread, and most who did were already familiar with using computers due to having them at work as more and more businesses installed computers at workers' desks. It seemed a natural thing to buy a computer for use at home once people discovered the advantages and conveniences of them for basic tasks such as writing the annual family Christmas letter and printing it out right there at home and for working with the family budget -- much easier to let the computer do the math than wrestling with it oneself!

As a librarian, I was exposed to computer usage in the mid-1980's and in 1990 I purchased an IBM PS/1 for home use. It, like computers at work, still used DOS but there was a rudimentary stab at a graphics interface as well. A couple of years went by and one day my mother-in-law and I were invited to dinner at the home of friends. The man of the household opened the front door and said to us, "Hi! Want to see my new computer? It has WINDOWS!" I eagerly said yes and the man and I spent the next half-hour or so immersed in the wonders of Windows and its graphics interface. It didn't take long for me to hand off my DOS-based IBM PS/1 and buy myself a machine with this fascinating new way of working.....

When AOL eventually shifted to the graphics platform and opened the gates to the masses, it felt as though suddenly Usenet was being invaded. It was rather overwhelming. It also was annoying, too, because we had to explain to all these newbies that, no, AOL itself was NOT the internet or the Wide World Web, it was simply one ingredient of it, and we had to teach them the basics of "Netiquette," how to use smilies, how to quote part, not the entirety, of someone else's post, etc. Usenet, which had always had somewhat of a Wild West, no-holds-barred flavor, became increasingly so. Those were the days....

 

[eyoungren]

I think what really made the difference was the switch from solely text-based interfaces on the DOS platform to the graphics interface. We accessed and communicated on Usenet via text, and while there was a steady increase in activity as more and more people discovered it, IMHO the floodgates really opened when Windows 3.1 and its graphics interface came into use, in businesses and eventually in homes.

In the 1980's a few people had already begun purchasing computers for their homes but it was not yet widespread, and most who did were already familiar with using computers due to having them at work as more and more businesses installed computers at workers' desks. It seemed a natural thing to buy a computer for use at home once people discovered the advantages and conveniences of them for basic tasks such as writing the annual family Christmas letter and printing it out right there at home and for working with the family budget -- much easier to let the computer do the math than wrestling with it oneself!

As a librarian, I was exposed to computer usage in the mid-1980's and in 1990 I purchased an IBM PS/1 for home use. It, like computers at work, still used DOS but there was a rudimentary stab at a graphics interface as well. A couple of years went by and one day my mother-in-law and I were invited to dinner at the home of friends. The man of the household opened the front door and said to us, "Hi! Want to see my new computer? It has WINDOWS!" I eagerly said yes and the man and I spent the next half-hour or so immersed in the wonders of Windows and its graphics interface. It didn't take long for me to hand off my DOS-based IBM PS/1 and buy myself a machine with this fascinating new way of working.....

When AOL eventually shifted to the graphics platform and opened the gates to the masses, it felt as though suddenly Usenet was being invaded. It was rather overwhelming. It also was annoying, too, because we had to explain to all these newbies that, no, AOL itself was NOT the internet or the Wide World Web, it was simply one ingredient of it, and we had to teach them the basics of "Netiquette," how to use smilies, how to quote part, not the entirety, of someone else's post, etc. Usenet, which had always had somewhat of a Wild West, no-holds-barred flavor, became increasingly so. Those were the days....

I was fortunate that my first online involvement, particularly with bulletin board systems, was through the Commodore 64. I saw a lot of what you describe (text-interfaces), but the C64 had a BBS community of it's own. A lot of SysOps were using AABBS and the C64 gave you ANSI graphics. So, to begin with, we had color and ANSI graphics.

It was very underwhelming when I got my first PC in 1990.

That said, I resisted Windows until 1996 when game developers started requiring W95 at a minimum. I always loved the control that DOS gave me.

As to netiquette, I have to smile at this. In the late 80s and early 90s, I was running my own BBS on a Commodore 128 (using AABBS). Some of my users were highschool kids (I was 20 or so) and it was from those users that I got my first education in emoticons and abbreviations.

BRB was the very first one I learned, followed shortly by AFK.