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.
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