Do You Remember Life Before Google?

I remember it, but I'm glad for Google now lol I used to say when iPhones first came out "why do you need internet on your phone?" Now I use it for everything
 
My DH bought a laptop for me around 2004ish. I remember saying it was ridiculous, I didn’t need my own computer. :rotfl:

It wasn’t until a few years later that I really understood the power of a google search. My kids had Leap Pads and there was something wrong with one of them. (can’t remember what now) I googled the specific issue and with some digging was able to find the fix. I was AMAZED that I could do that. Back then I was about the least techie person on the planet but I was able to fix this device all on my own. Opened up a whole new world to me. I kept saying to my DH, “Five years ago, I would have to spend hours on the phone or send it in!”
I love google for that. Plus youtube. So many things we have fixed on our own.

We were telling our son about movie-fone (that’s how they spelled it). You’d call and listen to the movie times and usually sit through 10 movies and RIGHT when they got to the one you wanted your mom/dad would walk in and start talking to you and YOUD MISS IT. Ahhh the agony.
Oh yeah. Plus TV Guide channel. You'd have to wait a while to get to the channel you wanted..on boy it sucked when you got distracted and missed it then you had to wait for it to come around again. Most of the time my mom would get movie times via the newspaper. My husband's grandmother def. still uses the newspaper as her TV guide.
 
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!!! :teeth:

But I'm old now (63) and love Youtube, Google, and pretty much anything else our computers offer us but my goodness if anything goes wrong....I always have to call the sons. :)
 


Definitively....life without a computer at all and without cell phones
Oh yeah. In my work it meant a lot of time on the phone in the office tracking down information or going to the library. And in the field, we always had a roll of dimes to make calls from pay phones.
 
Funk and Wagnals! I used to really sit at home and read about stuff from an encyclopedia or go to the library and look up stuff on the card catalog..oh and have to write down on paper where those books were in the library, vs today's card catalog which is online.
 


When I was a college freshman they gave us each our own email address, which was pretty new to them. They spelled my name wrong and it took me weeks to find who to ask to get it changed because no one knew who was in charge of that. And then when I found them they told me that an email address wasn't something they could change, there was nothing they could do and I had to live with a misspelled email for the next 4 years. But in college all I really used the internet for was emailing friends, we thought it was so amazing because we could keep in touch without paying long distance phone bills.

Now I google everything and I love love love having so much information at my fingertips.
 
Yes. My parents had a really old set of encyclopedia from the 60s. I used them plus ones at school all through school and I graduated high school in 87. I also read them for fun.
 
[old man voice on]

My first computer was a VIC 20 I bought for $300 in 1982ish, 3.5K of memory and a 22 column by 40 row screen.

[old man voice off]

I have found that this is a Gex X bonding experience: talking about your first computer. (Alternately, you could also ask about someone's first video game console.)

To answer the original question, yeah, I remember life before Google, or, more importantly, life before internet access. Considering the friends I have made as a result of it, how GPS has given me confidence (I inevitably would always end up "off map" when someone would provide me with driving directions), and the ease in my life at the things I can do remotely are just a few reasons why I prefer "life after Google."
 
We were telling our son about movie-fone (that’s how they spelled it). You’d call and listen to the movie times and usually sit through 10 movies and RIGHT when they got to the one you wanted your mom/dad would walk in and start talking to you and YOUD MISS IT. Ahhh the agony.

My husband can still mimic the Moviefone voice. It particularly cracked us up when we would call to check on times for our neighborhood movie theater because the guy massacred the pronunciation of the shopping center.
 
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!!! :teeth:

But I'm old now (63) and love Youtube, Google, and pretty much anything else our computers offer us but my goodness if anything goes wrong....I always have to call the sons. :)
:goodvibes We didn't have a remote control and when Dad said "change the channel" it was pretty straight-forward because we only got two!
 
Yup. I'm 54. I remember when the internet started and we got our first shared computer in an office of 50 people.

We had to type everything out on paper with carbon between it to get the 2nd copy. The only people allowed to touch that computer at the time were specifically trained on DOS. I was one of them. LOL

I also remember the first cell phones with the giant bags you had to carry and the huge phones. We had one of those because my husband just had to get it. I also remember him always taking it and me never getting to use it much. I think I made one call with that thing.

I did my High School research in the library and my parents had a set of Encyclopedia Brittannica. I remember my Dad talking about how he paid a mint for those. They burned them when they moved from the farm to their current place since they didn't need them anymore and nobody wanted them.
 
Yup. I'm 54. I remember when the internet started and we got our first shared computer in an office of 50 people.

We had to type everything out on paper with carbon between it to get the 2nd copy. The only people allowed to touch that computer at the time were specifically trained on DOS. I was one of them. LOL

I also remember the first cell phones with the giant bags you had to carry and the huge phones. We had one of those because my husband just had to get it. I also remember him always taking it and me never getting to use it much. I think I made one call with that thing.
Um, didn't you have a copier? Xerox machines (as they were generically known then) were around waaaay before pc's.
 
lol younger generations have no idea how easy they have it. In another active thread (can’t remember which one) someone couldn’t imagine how we survived without GPS. If you can’t remember going somewhere new and having someone try to fold up a map after it was used, you’re too young LOL

We (dh & I) survived quite well - I was the navigator with the map and he drove!! I 'still' keep an atlas with me while tripping. We drive a motor home and tow. You'd be surprised how many times a GPS has sent us astray! I always back up with my atlas! Our phone app 'maps' is usually better - both are supposedly up to date!
 
The other day, DS was complaining about a paper he has to write for school. I told him about how I had to write papers in the Dark Ages and mentioned the card catalog. He had no idea what I was talking about. I googled an image of a card catalog for him. He said no school library he's ever been in has had one. That seems strange to me. Electricity does go out and computers fail. (He's in 10th grade, BTW, so not real little.)
 
Oh yeah. In my work it meant a lot of time on the phone in the office tracking down information or going to the library. And in the field, we always had a roll of dimes to make calls from pay phones.
Even having stupid pagers , before cell phones . The phones were hard to find.
 
I'm 50, got an electric typewriter as a high school graduation gift, went for my master's in library science in the late 80s/early 90s and literally "rode the wave" of emerging technology. Typed up my grad papers on my dad's apple computer. Had to book time with the college's librarian to get time "on the web" (with her doing the searching, and being charged by the minute). My second library job was the first time we had one computer set up for "internet searching" and we literally all stood around it in wonder. At all first three of my library jobs I was responsible for automating the entire collection (good card catalogs!).

Makes me feel like I'm 100, not 50 :)

Terri
 
Yes, I remember life before Google since I am 52. Another person that rode the wave so to speak.

My dad always had to have THE LATEST gadget. He was playing the card game "Bridge" online in 1985ish? He claimed to be playing with Bill Gates and his ilk. It was a paid site he was on BACK THEN.

My dad bought me a word processor in 1983, when I went to college. I also was doing graphic designing on the Apple Computers in the lad around 1986?

Now Google is freaking me out, for real. It is always listening. Frankly I am a bit creeped out and intrigued at the same time.
 

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