this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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As a relatively elder millennial (1987), I'd concede the title of last true pre-internet generation to Gen X. My family got AOL dial-up when I was in 6th grade, which was a little behind the curve compared to my peers, but not much. So I certainly lived through a seminal transition period as the internet developed and became...what it is today.
But the hallmark experiences of the pre-internet times, payphones, paper maps, coordinating with others, I only did so in my limited capacity as a child. I had a cell phone by...10th grade, I could at least print out MapQuest directions, etc.
I remember a lot, but didn't truly interact with most of it.
I often look at it as when kids were unlikely to encounter any analogue things regularly. Did you have analogue clocks and phones for any period? The only problem with my definition is schools kept analogue clocks around for long after you would not see them anywhere else.
I can see what you mean for phones, but are analogue clocks supposed to be a thing of the past now? I have like 3 in my home and know many other people, including young people, who still have them.
I have only seen them with a bit of a retro thing with watches or digital emulations of them for easily over a decade and the only reason I saw any in early 2000 is because I worked at a school.
Really? Where are you located? I walk past three clocks on the way from my office to the metro station alone.
chicago. I mean there are some old buildings where they exist but not on my commute. I would be bowled over if any el stations had them.
I like that expression, I'm going to steal that.
These train displays haven't changed in probably 30 years here. Vienna also has a bunch ofthese public clocks on big intersections and squares.
I wonder if it's an America vs Europe thing? I'm in the UK and analogue clocks are still very common here as well. So maybe it's just America that don't use them much anymore.
I think that's the case. Like they're not unheard of here in the US. Like I could go out to the store right now and buy one. Wal-Mart or Target or a home goods store still sell htem. A lot of schools and colleges still have them in classrooms. But at home or in the office, I suspect they're more decorative than anything. Like all clocks in my place are digital. The only analog clock I have would be a watch in some box that I have that I never wear. I think my parents have one, like a small mantlepiece one. Otherwise, everything else is digital.
Analog watches are probably the most common encounter. But with so many, including me, using smartwatches, how common are they actually?
That's really interesting! It's definitely one of those differences between America and Europe that isn't really noticed. For me, seeing a digital clock would definitely get the "oooh, that's fancy" response. Like there are places that have a clock in the corner of a digital display for something else (eg, the displays at the train station listing the next train have a clock in the corner too), but when it's just there purely to tell the time, it's almost always an analogue one. I can't even remember the last time I saw a digital one!
I'm surprised at that, from my experience I think it's still more normal than not to have analogue clocks at home, and I would always prefer an analogue watch.
Yeah gen-x here, at the beginning there were nothing.
Then I got this "home computer" with the blazing speed at 1MHz (yeah, 0.001GHz and quite unoptimized) bringing me wonders above comprehension.
And then it got faster, better, bigger, smaller, over and over and over ... It felt crazy whaen anything doubled like speed, memory, discs, screen resolution, internet speed, ...
I feel todays computers are more than enough (except for research basically) and that was a crazy arc, from nothing to basic completeness.
Well that's how I feel it anyways 💖
First computer was a Commodore Vic-20. Second was a Tandy 1000TX. I remember dialling into BBSes pre-internet, but not on the Vic-20 of course.
I can still remember the feeling of seeing my first computer in person. Even in the late seventies it was rare to see even things like Atari 2600's. By the early eighties most of my friends had an Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 400/800, Coleco Adam, Commodore Vic-20/64, Apple II, Tandy Coco, etc. By the late eighties most of the people I knew had PCs of some sort (Tandy 1000TX in my case), Atari ST, or Amiga. Modems were still rare. It was the nineties when modems and BBSes seemed to really explode, quickly displaced by the Internet. Granted I remember connecting to Gopher before I personally connected to BBSes.
I look back on how things changed from 1980 to 1989, and it seems so much more sweeping than 2010 to 2019.
Depends on your country and family circumstances. I'm one year older than you & I only started interacting with the Internet at school at the age of 11 & only had it at home at 19.
As for those hallmark experiences I had them all & a lot. I got my cellphone in the 11th grade, but it had no internet on it. I was 22 years old when I got a Nokia N95 that had wifi & with that I could look up information after hunting for an open public wifi.( those were the days xD)
Haha yeah, when I say I had a cell phone, I mean that I was essentially reachable at all times. I didn't start using text messaging regularly until like...2009, and didn't use it for anything else until I got my first Droid a few years later.
Fair point though, my response was very American-centric.
I had the exact same pattern as you except I was born in a small town in 1996, I guess I had a gophone in 2nd grade just because my family situation though