Life before the internet wasn’t merely floppy disks and slow processing times. It was living without instant communications and access to information. It was waiting by the phone for someone to call, driving to a destination without step-by-step GPS directions, researching school assignments through library card catalogues, and learning cursive writing to communicate.

It might look like deprivation now, but being forced to make your own way, have your fun, and actually meet in person had its attractions. At least that’s what the old-timers, who grew up during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, say. Here are a few examples of how different life was before the internet.

Watching TV

When you watched TV programming, you had a choice of only a handful of channels, with shows and movies that would be interrupted every few minutes by an endless parade of commercials. “Streaming” was what juice did when you poured yourself a glass during an ad.

You couldn’t choose when to watch your favourite shows; you had to make yourself available for the programming time slot, or else you’d just have to hear about it the next day at school from your friends.

Using mobile phones

We are spoiled by today’s smartphones—basically little internet-connected computers in our pockets, able to shoot videos, do online banking, stay connected to our social media platforms, and the list goes on. We sometimes forget the cell phone’s more modest beginnings. Their only purpose was to make phone calls, until texting came along in the 1990s. If you wanted to, say, shoot a photo or video, you’d have to have a separate camera.

Dating

Before dating apps like Tinder, would-be love birds actually dated people they knew in the flesh and blood—from school, from work, through friends, and at bars. The selection of potential partners was smaller, but you were also less likely to get ghosted or misled this way.

If you felt adventurous, you might go on a blind date arranged by a helpful friend or busybody aunt. Or you might answer a classified companion ad in a newspaper—but you usually kept this to yourself since it smacked of desperation.

Programming

Before the shared resources of the internet, it was harder to learn computer programming. You’d have to figure out a lot of things by yourself, read books (if available and not obsolete once in print) and documentation, and see coding examples on floppy disks and CD-ROMs. Today programmers can share code and learn through online platforms such as GitLab and GitHub, making a complex process that much easier.

Reading the newspaper

If you posed the riddle above to a group of kids today, you might have to explain the answer—a newspaper. Hard to believe that for many people the news came through printed sheets of paper, which might be delivered to their home twice a day—morning and late afternoon.

If you were a kid reading the broadsheet comics spread on the floor, you’d look at your forearms and realize where the term “ink-stained wretch” might have come from.

Dialing phones

The first telephone you had was bulky, hanging on the wall, or sitting on a coffee table. It might have buttons to push to make a call, or, if you are really old, you had a rotary phone with a plastic wheel you dialed with a finger. (You dreaded phone numbers with a lot of zeros.) There was no caller ID or voicemail, and if you wanted the phone to become a mobile device, you had to have a really, really long cord.


Doing research

When it was time to research a school project, you couldn’t just fire up your browser and input a question in a search engine. You walked to the library, instead of surfing the world wide web, and you would have to flip through a card catalogue for what you were searching, perhaps getting versed by the librarian in the Dewey Decimal Classification system. If you found an old newspaper article you needed, you might have to view it miniaturized on film in a microfiche reader.


Getting mail

In the day, the postal service wasn’t just about delivering things you ordered online. Without emails, texts, Zoom meetings, or online messages of any kind, you were left with writing and sending people actual letters.

You had to take care because you couldn’t just backspace over mistakes and you didn’t want your letter to look like a dog’s breakfast of strikeouts and corrections. Then there was the waiting part—you’d visit your mailbox every day to see if there was a letter in response.

Figuring out the right time

Today daylight saving time is a breeze. Your smartphone automatically makes the hour switch and it is always on time. And, no doubt, since you use your smartphone as your alarm clock, you will get up on time the next day. Before this we had to remember to reset our alarm clocks. And since many people didn’t, it wreaked havoc on their personal and working schedules on the following days.

Getting together in person

When you socialized, it wasn’t a matter of texting, tweeting or interacting through other social media channels. You’d actually have to go to the trouble of meeting somewhere—in person!—like a coffee shop, restaurant or park.

Then you’d have to think of things to say without the distraction of incoming messages on your device. If you decided to see a movie together, you’d actually have to go to a movie theatre and not just stream it at someone's home (or wherever you’re sitting at the moment).

Taking pictures

Before digital cameras, or smartphones that act as cameras, more care was required when shooting. You couldn’t just take a fast series of images, check to see if you had what you needed on your screen, and then shoot again if necessary.

With old cameras, you’d have to shoot on film, pay to get that film developed into photographic prints, and then see, long after the fact, if the shoot worked out or was botched. And if you didn’t have a basic instant camera, you’d have to spend time learning how to use your SLR (single-lens reflex) camera.

Learning cursive writing

Since kids today spend most of their time keyboarding, cursive writing is taught very little if at all in schools. Some teachers view it as an outmoded form of communication. But without computers in the classroom in school or at home, years ago, students were taught handwriting so they could make themselves understood in schoolwork and writing letters (see earlier).

Some experts make the case that learning cursive writing can improve kids’ cognitive and visual skills.

Paying cash

With the internet today, not only do we have more ways to spend money and pay, we have more kinds of digital money to help facilitate financial transactions online, including cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies, and stablecoins. Before this, hard cash was king, and we would slap our bills down proudly for cashiers and tellers. In prehistoric times before ATMs, you’d see long lineups at banks on Fridays so people could draw out enough cash to last them the weekend.

Playing games at the arcade

Playing multiplayer games were once a matter of you and a group of friends going to an arcade and seeing who could get the high score on the pinball machine, working flippers, shaking the unit to drive up ringing scores and preventing the metal ball from being lost down the hole.

Early digital gaming consoles were simple, trying to shoot down jagged images of space invaders descending, or using simple line paddles to knock a ball back and forth in Pong.


Playing records

Before the era of streaming your favourite music through your device earbuds, getting music was more of a chore. First it was vinyl records you bought in a store and played with a stylus on a turntable. Then it was cassette tapes, reel-to-reel, eight-track, portable cassette players, CDs and, well, we forget. But even with the convenience of digital music and online streaming services, vinyl records have become retro cool and made a comeback. Some things never change.