Do You Remember Life Before Google?

[Feralpeg]

The world has changed dramatically over my life. I remember when color television was introduced. When we needed information, we went to the encyclopedia or the library. Our phone number was 424. lol.

I worked in the IT field for 30 years. When I first started, program code was written by hand on coding sheets to be keypunched. We were so excited when we finally got dumb terminals that allowed us to key in code one line at a time. You had to look at a listing for the line of code to change, enter the line number and re-key the entire line for submission. Then, you'd sit and wait for up to 20 minutes for the submission to complete. Crazy.

Now, my phone does more than I ever dreamed possible. I hope I'm around to see what advances happen over the next 30 years!

 

[Domo]

Bear in mind that the Apollo missions were carried out with a fraction of the computing power of your regular mobile phone... I mean, come on people! We sent people to the moon and back using what was basically a giant calculator!

 

[sam_gordon]

We have so many power outages here and I rely on my landline, but you know the cable company had to update stuff as my land line quit working once. I was dumb founded about that. I kept telling my husband when power goes out no way to keep cell phones going.

Generators at the cell towers and then use your vehicle to charge your cell phone.

 

[bcla]

Generators at the cell towers and then use your vehicle to charge your cell phone.

More likely batteries these days backing up cell towers.

 

[sam_gordon]

More likely batteries these days backing up cell towers.

Batteries would be on hand as a UPS. I'd be surprised if generators weren't in place.

 

[RedAngie]

I remember my sister and I getting all excited because they added a 4th channel to our TV set. Sure one of us would usually have to hold the rabbit ears a certain way to get that channel but we were in shape back then!!!
.

My parents had rabbit ears on the TV in their bedroom. We had an antenna rotator for the main living room TV. A box on the top of the TV with directions like a compass. You could shift from east to south or whatever direction and then the outside antenna on the roof would rotate to receive the best reception.

We didn't have a remote control and when Dad said "change the channel" it was pretty straight-forward because we only got two!

Even in the dark ages, we got seven channels. ABC-6, CBS-10, NBC-3, PBS-12 (non-commercial public TV, i.e Sesame Street), and then 3 UHF (ultra high frequency) channels which mainly showed reruns of Gilligan's Island and other fluff shows. Flyers NHL hockey was on Channel 29. The others were 17 and 48.

For some reason, perhaps 20 years ago, CBS and NBC swapped channels in the Philly area. CBS is now 3 and NBC is 10.

The main dial on the TV went from 2 to 13, then there was another notch to access UHF channels. You used a secondary dial (13 to something like 75) to tune in UHF channels.

I don't think we had a remote for any TV until the very late 1970's.

 

[Magpie]

Yep, I used to be WAY more comfortable with just shrugging and saying, "Dunno."

I remember getting into debates with my friends, which would end with, "Guess we'll never know!" Or debates with my elders, where I'd always have to concede because they were older and had more authority.

I suppose I could have got my lazy butt over to the library research section, but for minor trivia questions that was just more effort than it was worth. I had a lot less curiosity about things, in those days.

These days, however, almost all answers can be found in an instant through Google. My mum hates it, because we routinely fact check her, and for a woman with multiple degrees, she's wrong an awful lot of the time. She's literally said, "I hate Google!"

I love it!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

It was definitely different having to look up stuff in encyclopedias etc... Or if you wanted to know the lyrics to a song, you had to be lucky enough to find somebody who had a cassette or something and hope it had the lyrics printed on the inside on the paper I remember having to go into a bookstore and look up stuff. It was rough trying to perform calculations to convert stuff to like metric. Now you can just ask Siri or google it. I really don't think I could easily go back to the "good old days" of not having all the information in the world so easily available.

 

[PollyannaMom]

It's definitely a trade-off. Having to look things up the old fashioned way developed patience, being able to get information instantly encourages curiosity. Both are good in their own way.

 

[RedAngie]

I remember life when Google was spelled googol was referred to 10 raised to the 100th power. Or 1 followed by 100 zeros.

And a googolplex was 10 raised to the googol-eth power. Or 1 followed by a googol's worth of zeros.

 

[Missy1961]

The big thing for me: whenever we watch a TV show or a movie, I no longer have to be driven insane, wondering where else I have seen a particular actor.

My parents used to ask me to look at some movie and tell them where they had seen this or that actor before. (I had a great memory for faces and voices so I could usually tell them) But once someone told me about IMDB.com, I never had to spend hours trying to remember where I heard that voice!

 

[Missy1961]

I'm 56, so I remember very well. Every time I had to do a research paper, I had to get someone to drive me to the library. (the research books we had at home were very quickly out of date, even if my dad still has every single one in his house) I started working at a directory publishing company in 1983, and we still had to use research books whenever we had a question. Then sometime in the 1990s, the main publication started to use computers and of course, the internet, to do that research. Gradually, we got two PCs in our department and we were allowed to use them at lunch time to look at stuff. Then they hired a few new middle management folks, and one of them used to show us cool stuff he found on the internet.

So when I decided I wanted to buy a PC for myself, I asked my younger brother to help me purchase one. He's a MD, but had always loved computers. So in 1998, he shopped around and got me a monitor, a keyboard, and a tower so I could go online by using our phone line. I loved that I could research my Disney trip while sitting at home. Then when that computer died, I was scared, but I bought myself a Dell, and installed it myself - which amazed me but it was simple. I got a cable modem in 2010, and it just made stuff so much fun.

I still don't own a smartphone - can't afford it - but I do have an iPod Touch, so I can go anywhere and surf the net. It still amazes me when I think of how much this has impacted my life in the last 20 years. I got downsized in 2014, and was able to apply for unemployment online, found a few temp jobs online (one company that hired me was in Florida, and the other was really in India, I did everything over the internet) and even found my retail job at a local Kohl's - which is 5 minutes from home - online, since they do almost all their hiring online now.

 

[bcla]

So when I decided I wanted to buy a PC for myself, I asked my younger brother to help me purchase one. He's a MD, but had always loved computers. So in 1998, he shopped around and got me a monitor, a keyboard, and a tower so I could go online by using our phone line. I loved that I could research my Disney trip while sitting at home. Then when that computer died, I was scared, but I bought myself a Dell, and installed it myself - which amazed me but it was simple. I got a cable modem in 2010, and it just made stuff so much fun.

The issue with Windows PCs isn't necessarily setting them up, which isn't really that hard. I've done that myself several times. For me the big deal is keeping them running properly. I've bought Windows PCs for my parents, and there have been times when they work so poorly and need some sort of maintenance that took a lot of effort. Sometimes it was malware, while other times the OS somehow got bogged down. I don't know how many times my parents have called me up asking them to look at their computers. I'm not really an IT guy and I mostly use Macs at home, but I can usually figure it out better than they can

 

[powellrj]

We had Funk and Wagnalls that my mom use to buy the next letter volume at the grocery store. I remember Johnny Carson use to make fun of them, but they got me through school!

When I was a senior in HS, one of the rich kids got a digital watch and a calculator and we were all amazed.

When we took our oldest DS to WDW for the first time back in the 80's, I spent hours at the library making index cards using all the books they had on WDW. We would always buy a new atlas every year to keep in the car and my DH got mad at me for recycling the phone book and not keeping it because he liked using it instead of google. He finally started keeping one in his car to use when he was working to save the minutes on his cell phone.

I remember in HS, we had a phone attached to the wall. My dad got this huge phone cord so I could go in the closet and talk on the phone instead of having to sit at the kitchen table. All my friends envied me that I could talk in private and not have the whole family listen to my hours and hours of phone calls. We have viop now because I prefer using a regular phone to talk on instead of my cell, which my kids make fun of me for.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I remember what a big deal it was in elementary school to be chosen to make copies on the mimeograph machine. You'd come back with blue fingers. I will never forget the smell of the ink.

 

[maxaroni]

I remember what a big deal it was in elementary school to be chosen to make copies on the mimeograph machine. You'd come back with blue fingers. I will never forget the smell of the ink.

I also loved the smell of the copies from the mimeograph

 

[undertheradar]

What's Google?

 

[klmall]

I remember signing up for trial AOL memberships (over and over) so I could read the messages posted in their Disney newsgroup; must have been in the mid 80s.

I don't remember exactly when we got our first home computer but it was a Mac SE and cost 3x what a good laptop costs today. We got a decent discount through our teacher union but it was still an expensive purchase. We just kept on upgrading until PCs became more user friendly and then left Macs for good.

To plan our first family Disney trip in 1990 I used the R.A.P.D. newsgroup and literally memorized the "Unofficial Guide....". There were so few guidebooks published back then compared to the dozens now and of course, very few Disney-related websites.

When we planned our 3 week SW USA road trip in 2000 I used the Internet to book every hotel ahead of time and haven't stopped doing our own trip planning since that time. I can't imagine not having Google, Trip Advisor and attraction websites to explore before our trips today!