It's hard to imagine life without it now, information on every subject under the sun a mouse click away, it's become an invaluable tool for almost everyone. I've found out so many practical things that have enabled me to carry out DiY tasks around the home, to name just one recent task that would years ago have meant a trip to the library hoping I'd find a book with a guide to replacing a toilet flush. An online guide plus a few hints and tips on a plumbing forum it was job done in a morning rather than either taking a week while I found what it entailed or risking a visit from a tradesman.
How did we know which cars were dogs and which were not? Or find people who had owned the model we wanted to see what their experiences were? And when they went wrong, finding out things that the Haynes manual didn't tell us (ie most things of any use). Teletext never covered any of that. And so many other ways it's made life a lot easier in ways far too numerous to list.
Downside I suppose is that I've forgotten how to write, apart from scribbled notes everything is typed now and reaches the recipient seconds after I've finished it.
Can anyone imagine living without it now, or even remember how they got by before it came along?
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>> Can anyone imagine living without it now, or even remember how they got by before
>> it came along?
>>
Yeah just about, I think most people would cope, a period of readjustment of course. I end up going away with work to some back of the beyond places, end quickly adjusting pretty quickly.
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In some ways though it has slowed us down. I can remember as a junior manager going off on buying trips with a budget and just getting on with things. Made deals, shook the suppliers hand and job done.
Now, finding myself in an allegedly far more senior position, it sometimes occurs to me that I may have to announce to quite a wide group of email recipients that I may be about to break wind and does everyone in the loop agree with the appropriateness of that, the timings of the proposal and are they comfortable with the possible ramifications of how that decision might impact on them and their team?
This normally results in me being invited to put the proposal into a formal document preferably with an attached spreadsheet setting out the critical path of the intended fart.
Provided all interested parties are in agreement, which can take at least a working week to establish, the action can be ratified. However, the moment for it , and indeed those for the more useful concurrent commercial intentions, have often passed by then.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Wed 5 Nov 14 at 20:06
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Penthouse, Playboy and Razzle.
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>> Penthouse, Playboy and Razzle.
Heh heh... and a hundred other forms. Who thinks the internet is the only form of Onanism?
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I still have a few copies of Mayfair from 1974. Only kept for the interesting articles on cars and planes.....you understand !
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>> I still have a few copies of Mayfair from 1974. Only kept for the interesting
>> articles on cars and planes.....you understand !
>>
Is that the Triumph owners club magazine ( to early for the Mini Mayfair version) ?:-)
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On the plus side you can easily find out anything you want to know.
On the negative side though, it seems to me that it has devalued knowing stuff.
It used to be fun finding out stuff just in case the knowledge came in handy. These days there's no point.
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>> On the plus side you can easily find out anything you want to know.
>>
>> On the negative side though, it seems to me that it has devalued knowing stuff.
>>
>> It used to be fun finding out stuff just in case the knowledge came in
>> handy. These days there's no point.
>>
I don't know . Looking at various car and beekeeping forums, there are a lot of people who know nothing and can't do a very simple search..
After all, if you can't search properly (and it only usually takes 1-5 minutes), then you are useless. Judging by the HJ forums a fair % of the population is computer illiterate.
Edit and many are much younger than me - by several decades.
or perhaps they are thick.
Last edited by: madf on Thu 6 Nov 14 at 09:50
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Hate to think just how much I've spent on the Internet buying products since 1996, but on the other hand what I saved has probably paid for a fair amount of booze.....
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I think it was Joan Robinson who said that a perfect economy required perfect competition and total visibility.
The internet had brought us surprisingly close to that and seemingly is proving her correct.
A very clever woman, pity she didn't live to see it happen.
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>>
>> Mayflower ??
>>
I used to have one of those - my first car. Cost £10, ran it for 2 years, sold it for £20.
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>> >>
>> >> Mayflower ??
>> >>
>>
>> I used to have one of those - my first car. Cost £10, ran it
>> for 2 years, sold it for £20.
>>
Sharp rise in scrap prices? They were hideous things.
Last edited by: Harleyman on Thu 6 Nov 14 at 09:42
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>>
>> I still have a few copies of Mayfair from 1974. Only kept for the interesting
>> articles on cars and planes.....you understand !
>>
You do talk a lot of fanny at times Teddy.
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What did we do before bank machines? In the 70s my old man would go to the CO-OP bank in Stockport on Saturday, queue up and withdraw the week's cash by communicating with a bank teller.
I got my first bank account in 86 as a student so bank machines were the norm. But I do remember NatWest started using the Switch symbol on the card while I was a student, so it changed from cheque guarantee card to debit card. So apart from paying the gas bill and posting it off, I never ever had to used a cheque book at the supermarket or petrol station.
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>> You do talk a lot of fanny at times Teddy.
>>
I'll take that as a compliment from a fellow Devonian, Mart. May the farce be with you ! :-p
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>> information on every subject under the sun a mouse click away<<
Two words missing there, I think: 'reliable' and 'authoritative'.
Before the internet many of us had lives. I've still got mine.
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I think the internet has made people for fussy, but that is for another thread.
I personally don't know what it is like to be an adult without the internet, as I've had it since 1997. It has certainly made DIY easier and diagnosing car problems.
I still llike good old fashioned books and magazines though. I remember getting a smart phone circa 2006 and going to a pub quiz, it was so new nobody I realised I was sneaking to the toilet go use google! (I only did it once, and only because I was convinced I knew the answer but my brain would not let me retrieve it)
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I personally don't know what it is like to be an adult
Careful, Rats. Some people here have no scruples about quoting out of context.
}:---)
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>> people here have no scruples .
>>
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Shouldn't the thread's question be 'what did we do before the world wide web?' The Internet is just an interlinked network which started in the 60s as ARPANET which was one of the first pack switched networks. Okay without it you wouldn't have the WWW but
Who remembers Gopher for example?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 6 Nov 14 at 13:28
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Don't recall that but I do remember spending upwards of £100 a month on combined bills for phone and Compuserve just to use chat, suppose that would have been late 80s so it was a lot of money!!!
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The Gopher protocol was similar to HTTP. The application was called Gopher as well.
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I worked for Digital and in the 80s we had VAXNotes and VAXMail.
Digital had it first, just had no idea how to make money out of it!
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I was using Wang email in the mid/late 80s. It was only internal though. By the 90s I'd moved into support for Wang and Wang Office (as the email system was known) was one of the products I became a European tech specialist in.
Also I was in the implementation team for one of the first ever voicemail systems (Wang DVX) at the National Coal Board which gets a Wikipedia mention en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories
Long time ago now....
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I have recently been going through boxes of family postcards dating from about 1900 to 1930.
The striking thing is how quickly and reliably they were delivered.
They thought nothing of sending a quick postcard saying which train they would be on later that day.
Cards were written in a kind of gossipy text-speak, full of abbreviations. There must have been millions such flying around the country, indeed the whole British Empire.
It was a world of surprisingly fast communication. There were I think 4 daily postal collections and deliveries in the cities.
For really fast communication of course there were telegrams. Travellers could cable their bank in London and have money wired anywhere in the world.
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I have been travelling around since about 79. It was my habit for years to send a weekly postcard to my Mother, and used to receive in return a 3 or 4 page letter every other week or so.
Both used to bring me a lot of pleasure, and I was only discussing with my Mother the other day how much I miss sending postcards and receiving letters.
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When I was a kid we used to host large family gatherings at Christmas - maybe 6 or 7 different sets of relatives from different parts of the country. Given that I can remember when we first got a phone, I imagine my parents must have carried out all the planning and invites by post. So it's altogether much easier these days.... but it must have been quite a serious bit of planning back then to make it all happen,a nd quite satisfying when everyone turned up on the expected day!
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When I was at university I had email, Internet access (WWW was in it's infancy), etc. I then started to work for an IT company in 1995. They had internal email but no easy way of sending an email to an SMTP style email address (it was a right faff). But email was not common for non IT companies at the time. We had no direct Internet access either! I used dialup.
And this was working for an IT company!!
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>> When I was at university I had email, Internet access (WWW was in it's infancy),
>> etc. I then started to work for an IT company in 1995. They had internal
>> email but no easy way of sending an email to an SMTP style email address
>> (it was a right faff). But email was not common for non IT companies at
>> the time. We had no direct Internet access either! I used dialup.
>>
>> And this was working for an IT company!!
>>
Well I graduated and started work in 1992, and have always had a PC and email at work. IIRC at the first job (BTR - what happened to them!) it was just internal, but by 1995 at American Airlines (actually SABRE for me) it was a beige Compaq laptop and I was using it for external email. Don't ask me if that was an SMTP style address, though I suppose it was a sort of IT company ;-) Do n't think we had Internet access to start with though, but it wasn't long after that before I had an ISDN line at home. No idea why - I have absolutely no recollection of doing anything useful with it bar checking email occasionally! But then I can't really recall what any of those early jobs actually entailed on a day to say basis. I remember the people, the offices,the company cars and the travel. But not the actual work... The mobile phone number I have today is basically the same one I was given then too - it's been ported with me ever since.
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>> I was using Wang email in the mid/late 80s. It was only internal though.
First started using email in 1982, PROFFS hosted on a VM system using a 3270 terminal. Internal only. My boss at the time just deleted (PF4) all email and said "if its important - they can ring me"
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Ha PROFS - I remember that, I supported a Wang VS/PROFS gateway at Ford Warley.
Didn't some French IT boss decide a year or so back to ban internal email? I wonder what happened to that idea?
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I remember Mrs. MD working for a Solicitor circa 1981 (ish) in outer West London using a new (then) Wang Word Processor, about the size of a smart car. The other girls had typewriters I think. Her behind the doors also had a petrol account which 'issed the others off too. Happier days for sure by far.
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>> The French IT email ban I referred to above...
>>
>> www.ft.com/cms/s/0/11384220-8761-11e2-bde6-00144feabdc0.html
Unfortunately it's paywalled requiring at least registration if not payment to read.
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>> The French IT email ban I referred to above...
>>
>> www.ft.com/cms/s/0/11384220-8761-11e2-bde6-00144feabdc0.html
use google to search atos email ban.
Then follow the hit to FT. Its google cached and readable.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 6 Nov 14 at 22:42
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>>PROFFS hosted on a VM system using a 3270 terminal. Internal only.
I was steveww@basvm2 - I think there was a limit of 900 users per system!
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lets get it right guys,
the product was PROFS, one F
the big blue IT company version, tailored and spread out internally worldwide, was NOSS
The product sold fairly successfully to large organisations as a mainframe based internal email, calendaring and document storage system
Links were developed between us, ie IBM, and large customers, and, just before we bought Lotus and adopted Notes as the worldwide internal email / document system there were links to internet based email as well.
It was renamed as OffiveVision/VM around 1990 and finally went out of use as an external product early this century, long after I had ceased to have anything to do with it.
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>> lets get it right guys,
>> the product was PROFS, one F
Ah! A real life VM biggot! I thought they were all dead. CMS is all i can say to you!
User nicknames were based on First letter of Christian name, and first three letters of surname combined.
Poor old Sue Lutz, she never did live that one down.
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Tony Watkinson must have wished he'd insisted on Anthony.
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>> Ah! A real life VM biggot! I thought they were all dead. CMS is all
>> i can say to you!
>>
Back in the day when PC's were for geeks and other enthusiastic types (I got my first one in 1982) having worked in IT (mainframe OS DOS and VM, and minis 3790 5520 8100) for 5 years by then
Memories eh?
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At least us folk of a certain age know how to survive without the interweb thingy. I think a prolonged power cut would put some people into meltdown. Just imagine the horror if your ithingy stopped working. I believe that some people can't even function without a mobile phone. :)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 7 Nov 14 at 12:48
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Absolutely, I remember the peace of not being contactable, the world didnt come to an end because I was out of contact for an hour
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I was thinking more of months. :)
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My first computer was a PDP with Dec Tape in 1969.. Moon Lander was a great game...
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Uninterestingly, my "handle" here (and elsewhere) is that given to me when we got our first network. Can't even remember what network it was, maybe Windows 3.0 but I think I remember seeing Windows 1 too. It was superseded by Banyan Vines and something else IIRC, my company had support specialists in both so we all got a dabble. My first formal Windows training was Windows server 3.5 server admin and SQL something.
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 7 Nov 14 at 20:20
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I've resisted computers all the way, ever since I used to get ill in the house filled with vacuum tubes in Portland Place that was in the stone age the Ferranti Mainframe, biggest computer in London outside MI6 and far feebler than this Apple thing or even a mobile phone or child's toy. Later, when they were already well obsolete, I got a green screen Amstrad. It was painfully slow, labour-intensive and tiresome, but it was both typewriter and filing system, and you could correct the text before printing it out prettily in rough draft dot matrix (I love that). People jeered and said get a PC with a colour screen. I thought, what I want that poncy crap for? But of course it worked far quicker than the blessed Amstrad and had other advantages too. So I got one of those. Its desktop successor is under my desk here, unused. And here, so to speak, we are. Still have a lot of disks and discs, even an old 5 1/4 inch genuinely floppy floppies from my second computer. Got a detachable disk slot/reader thingy that can read the ordinary old 3 1/2 inch PC floppies, when I can get it to work.
Before I got the Amstrad I used to type market research reports, with lots of snopake, xxxxings out and handwritten insertions, and give the dishevelled text to a professional typist with an IBM or similar. They, or rather she, would type a fair copy and a printer's mat and charge a healthy fee for doing it. All that palaver and running back and forth was horrible with market research. At least in journalism the copy takers would make sense of one's bumf, garbled telexes or foxed phone calls, up to a point, with luck. Every now and then they would screw up and make you look a prat, but then you probably were a bit of one to be doing that for a living so it served you right on some level.
:o}
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 7 Nov 14 at 21:24
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>> when we got our first network. Can't even remember what network it was, maybe Windows
>> 3.0 but I think I remember seeing Windows 1
There was no networking in Windows 1! :-) Nor 3.0. And TCP/IP networking was iffy in 3.11 and 3.11 for workgroups too. NetBEUI was about a lot earlier than TCP/IP for Windows but that didn't give you Internet (TCP/IP) access.
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And I've just remembered the nightmare that was Winsock!
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>> And I've just remembered the nightmare that was Winsock!
Now you mention it I remember pestering the techies over winsock errors when we first got PC/network at work c1998.
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>> There was no networking in Windows 1! :-) Nor 3.0. And TCP/IP networking was iffy
>> in 3.11 and 3.11 for workgroups too. NetBEUI was about a lot earlier than TCP/IP
>> for Windows but that didn't give you Internet (TCP/IP) access.
You never had to make that lot work over broken ring tho did you, or add 3270 emulation!
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So what did we do before the internet? - sooty123
