how did you get onto the Internet before computers?

[pokerfan]

This is either really awesome or really sad...

What does it mean to grow up in a digital world? Here are three anecdotes:

An acquaintance has a son about 8 years old. They were talking about the old days, and the fact that when my friend was growing up they did not have computers. This fact was perplexing news to his son. His son asks, "But how did you get onto the Internet before computers?"



Read the rest: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/born_digital.php

[dimbear]

1. We used the original wireless carrier.

Carrier pigeons.

[pokerfan]

3. we were electrified

Blogs:


YouTube:


Chat:


Gaming:

[rurallib]

2. it was an exit off the interstate

[nolabear]

4. We're so old we had to punch holes in the cards with rocks.

LOL! Actually, I'm so old I was one of the ORIGINAL computer game players. A bunch of us at Duke University in about 1980 played a version of Empire, invented by Peter Langston and later reinvented (don't ask) by Walter Bright, or vice versa, and I was a player named "Legion", so self-named because I was really a group of COmputer Science majors who stayed up til all hours plotting how to play/hack the game. It got wonderfully visious, with one player (computer genius, people not so much) eventually finding a way to keep us from accessing the Duke computer system, and a fellow in the theology program, who was "God" sending a plague down on him once we petitioned and prayed and sacrificed. It was a great example of computers and reality totaly getting out of their boundaries.

Btw I didn't know JACK about what the all-nighters on my team were doing; I was just the one in the right department to have access to the computer.

Hey, a frontier is a frontier...

[pokerfan]

5. "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"

I remember playing Advent on the department's hp minicomputer around 1978 or so...

[csziggy]

6. Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol

CPIP for short.

Here is the link for the specifications and implementations: http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/

I like the photo pages.

[jcboon]

7. Weed

Talk about cyberspace. . .

[Heidi]

8. Jumper cables.

Or catapult.

[hayu_lol]

9. The earliest critter resembling the internet...

was the Amateur Radio Operator and all the people involved from around the world. Maybe the past 100 years or so. You could easily build your own equipment. To join the community, one needed to pass a few simple tests and obtain a Federal license.

Commodore owners in the early 80s had Q-Link...a membership net that cost .08/minute to use. Chat rooms, games, contests, and more.

[siligut]

10. I went to the library

Research now is so much easier.

[Cruzan]

11. Mostly used one of these

or occasionally when I had special permission, one of these

[dawg]

12. I found an old Penthouse magazine someone had thrown away.

It was pretty much better than the internet. Basically the same content, only there were no conservative morons trying to tell me the President was born in Kenya.

[pokerfan]

14. kids today

don't know how good they have it. Back in my day, to find porn you had to go "Outside" (see gaming above in post #3) and hope to find it in a barn or in the woods. And you really, really hoped those stains were from the rain. :puke:
But, yeah. The quality was better. Amateur porn stars are not really amateurs. They are just really ugly professionals. :)

[eShirl]

13. telegraph, then shortwave

[MilesColtrane]

15. If I remember correctly it entailed using a ladder.

[raccoon]

16. Climbed a tree. nt

[Amerigo Vespucci]

17. Turned left at Albuquerque.

:eyes: