Ask HN: What do you miss about the life before Internet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you miss about the life before Internet?

16 pointsjimsojim31 comments

Nothing. I'm 34 years old and grew up in the rural Southeastern U.S. We had a meager public library that was a 20-minute drive from my home. I spent as much time as I could get away with in my schools' libraries.

My entire childhood, I had the sense of a world much bigger than the one I lived in that was just beyond my reach. My mother could give me glimpses when we went on vacation, but I was living years out of touch.

When we got Internet access, I got connected in a life-changing way to that world. It transformed how I learn, how I discover, what I remember, how I connect with people, everything, and all of it for the better. I think I'd rather die than go back.

My hometown didn't have sidewalks. My house was a long and extremely unsafe walk away from anything of value, and my mother worked insane hours. When she finally caved and got dial up, I remember everything changed very aggressively. There was no longer a physical barrier between me and new information or new people. I could be stuck in my isolated home and still have hours of things to do. Sometimes I think the people that say things like "I wish we could go back to before everyone had the internet" never lived in an area where, without the internet, you never really had anything to begin with.

How you could enjoy video games without having the entire game spoiled for you before the release date. Pre internet, you played at your leisure, didn't know what to expect and saw new things/character/levels/gameplay mechanics as they came. So you'd play say, Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VII and every area, boss, new attack, etc would be a surprise.

Nowadays on the other hand, the internet means that a video of the final boss and ending will probably be up on Youtube in less than a week. Probably a matter of hours after the release date to be honest, there's a sort of obsession with recording the entirety of every new game as quickly as possible.

I also miss the existence of rumours and hearsay about stuff in video games. Like, of getting the Triforce in Ocarina of Time, Luigi in Mario 64 or finding Mew in Pokemon Red and Blue. Pre internet and early internet, this sort of stuff spread via the school playground and other places like a weird game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone. It was nuts the kind of stuff that you'd hear, like the the story about the flying pink cow that would apparently take you to the Temple of Light or something.

But thanks to the modern internet, these games now get disassembled about a week after their release, so people know exactly what's included and can confirm or rule out any interesting rumour before it can get started.

While I agree with the sentiment people were looking up game walkthroughs long before he games you're referring to

I enjoy not getting into arguments with people who buy into each and every rumor, no matter how absurd it is. Though I'll chalk this up to a difference in gossip culture.

I absolutely abhor rumors and gossip. Give me some facts or some data - otherwise don't waste my time. Other people enjoy gossiping and get excited about rumors and the "mystery" that comes with them.

Writing (and reading) letters. Email brings speed - and brevity. But letters forced writers to be more...deliberate with their words.

I'm currently reading a collection of letters from Richard Feynman - curated by his daughter, who weeded through file cabinets full of them, forwarded from Caltech's archives. One can chart the course of a life by the letters that person wrote. It makes me wonder - when all of us are gone, will someone publish collections of emails from our noteworthy contemporaries? I doubt it.

Digital communications are fleeting. While they can more easily be archived than a drawer full of paper letters, they can also easily be deleted with a keystroke. Email and text communications offer many advantages, but they lack the weight of the written word - and the longevity.

People's ability to accept and even enjoy being bored.

Related: People's ability to accept they cannot - and should not and do not deserve to - get everything right now.

and i miss the time: where they were no selfies all over the place. when people weren't such egocentrics. when no one would loose a career for a single tweet. and, last but not least, when no one else than my newsagent would know which porn i'm into...

Newspapers-- it was once considered a professional requirement to read them daily. Beyond local news-- you were really on your information game if you read the NY Times or Wall Street Journal.

The printed paper format seems to lend itself more easily to tripping over interesting articles that you might not normally seek out. Versus mindless, repetitive web surfing.

And of course, if you wanted to share a news item with someone-- it meant cutting it out and mailing via the postal service. Usually, accompanied with a brief handwritten note. Always nice to receive. Now a lost art form.

I disagree. In college (1995-99) I had to subscribe to WSJ for my business courses, and I hated it. I would have much rather had a digital subscription; I'd read it when I could, I could easily share it. Instead, I got a disdain for paper subscriptions.

They had digital subscriptions. In fact, I'd guess that WSJ.com was the first successful paid-online-subscription newspaper that still endures as paid subscription. (The San Jose Mercury was earlier, but they went free later for a number of years.)

Back in the 90s, WSJ Op-Ed content was free, but the rest was paywalled.

Yes, but the class requirement was the paper subscription. Pretty sure the professor was just an WSJ paperboy.

People being completely cool with just going for a walk. It could be a freak nice 70 degree day in December and people are still inside watching tv,on computers, playing video games, texting, etc. It's a sad world when you can't separate yourself enough to enjoy the moment.

I'll second this one. I love walking. I've walked all over Chicago, SF, Manhattan, and other cities and there's just something about being _there_, in the moment. It'll never happen the same way again.

Another thing I'll add is people just standing around waiting for something - anything. For the light to turn green at a crosswalk. Waiting for a friend to get done using the restroom after a movie lets out. Waiting for coffee or food. Having a drink. Phones are everywhere, all the time. Nonstop.

The internet has provided a way for me to sustain my livelihood and I love it for that. The same way I love electricity and plumbing. But, I feel like this is just the beginning and there might be some day where no one will pay attention to anything around them. Only their devices.

People not constantly staring at their phones. Everywhere. Outside. Inside. In restaurants. At work.

How about when supposably serving customers? That's got to be the worse one. You'd go get a coffee or something, and the person behind the counter would be more interested in seeing what's happening on Twitter or Instagram than actually taking the order or serving people.

There was a story[1] last year about a restaurant that did some research and found that wait times (and subsequently Yelp ratings) suffered because of phone usage by patrons.

tl;dr - people spending time on their phones, slows down service/table turnover at restaurants.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690490/Service-time...

Not a lot.

I sometimes miss the more quiet world, getting lost in my own thoughts, interacting directly with people, idle pleasures of various kinds. Of course, I visit that world with an off-grid camping trip each year. A good week being in a beautiful place with no possibility of connecting to anything is awesome!

Then I get bored, play, hike, explore, talk, relax, and sort of reset. I come back charged and ready to go!

Really, my only regret is not having Internet sooner. I would have done so much more as a kid.

I was an only child, isolated, rural, so alone. So alone so alone so alone. Fuck life before the internet.

Wow, that looks like a terrible little poem.

Also, being a smart kid but not having any role models or anyone who knew about the stuff I was interested in to help me in the right direction.

Connection to the outside world could've made a huge difference when an abusive home life was my entire world.

The ability to start a face-to-face conversation with someone without feeling like I was intruding on their electronic world.

Reading more books.

Movies were more enjoyable.

Now everyone has either spoiled the movie ahead of you, bitched online about how awful it was, analyzed the trailer and figured out all the surprises (or the trailer itself gave it away), or we're all tracking the weekend box office returns to confirm our choice of movie as the Winning Choice or as The Bomb That You Shouldn't See (But Will Be A Cult Classic in Twenty Years When It's Given a Chance)

Movies also stayed in the theaters longer. Remember when the original run of Star Wars lasted almost an entire year?

Plus the absence of internet-enabled devices (phones, etc.) in theaters.

I recall when "The Godfather" and "Rocky" were in first-run theaters for at least a year. The Syufy theaters had a quarter-page print ad for one or more films every single day.

In 1986, I "text chatted" via my Commodore 64 to another kid in a neighboring town, across our 600 baud modems, using our parent's home phone land lines. I'll never forget typing the white letters on the blue screen: "Hey Brian can you see this?"

...then seeing the screen cursor start to produce characters that I didn't type:

"Yep sure did"

It would be 8 more years before I accessed the Internet in 1994.

I think what I miss is the thrilling self-discovery of communicating in a new medium.

Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), discovering new things at public libraries, traveling around to different libraries, having a tan.

I was born in 1990, started using the Internet at around age 5 with Windows 95. I don't remember life without it. I remember using Encarta, and playing Oregon Trail, and AOL's program. Those are my first memories of the Internet and Computing in general.

I miss not being so hooked and dependent on social networks.

Less apparently BS businesses and BS books based on the emergent qualities of the Internet. Less inboxes to check.

This was a post on reddit that was highlighted on businessinsider.

I miss less distractions

Physical photographs

sports.

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