I still remember a world where the internet didn't exist the way it does today. And a time when color TVs were too expensive to afford. And a time when we didn't have stuff like video games, home video players (VHS and DVD), home computers, cell phones, etc… I can still live without those, but the adjustment now would be excruciating. How about the rest of you? Ever lived without all this tech we have now? Or ever wonder how you would be able to live without it all?

You know I don't really like technology. I went on this school camp and when it was ending and we were on the bus home, I felt sort of sad having to go back to the internet and technology. I use it so much I just can't get away. But I don't want. I just have to.

I remember when I got my first computer. It was around my confirmation age. It didn't have Internet access for the first year or so but I experienced that first at my school, using Netscape Navigator. I also remember witnessing instant messaging (via irc) for the first time, during a weekend trip at the national boyscout headquarters. A channel had been created to allow scouts from around the world to chat with each other. When my mom finally agreed to install a dial up to the computer, we went to the computer store who told us to come back in two weeks time. The reason? They were about to get the brand spanking new 56.6 kbps model. Before that the fastest dial ups were the 28.8 kbps models. I'm never, ever gonna miss dial up.

I also remembered when cell phones started to be commonplaces. I didn't see the point in getting it at first. After all, we had phones at homes. I also got a bit scared of the thing when the rumor started to circulate that they gave people cancer. Now it's essentially a necessity in life (but I still keep it in pockets that's far away from my crotch).

I spend years looking forward to the DVD. My class had an article pinned on the wall about the possibility of using CDs to store movies and I was so psyched about the idea. I kept reading and re-reading that article over and over again. The first DVD movie scene that I saw was the car chase scene in the movie The Rock. It was being shown in a PC that was on a display in the same computer store where I got my dial up.

Can we live without these things? Sure. Do I want to live without these things? Not really. I'm way to fond of the internet to want it to go away. It's just way too handy of a communication tool for me to want that.

It's actually funny how disrespectful one can get at technology that's become obsolete. Stuff that used to be bleeding edge tech 10 years ago is now laughed at and ridiculed. VHS? Pffh, throw that brick out of here. You mean you're still using cords? It's wi-fi or nothing mister. Your phone can't record HD? Why are you still using it? If you don't own at least a duo core computer, you're using shit.

I think we had a b&w tv set until I was about… 5? 6? I know that in 1990 (when I was 10) we already had a color one. A big BIG biiig MASSIVELY big russian tv (something like 25-30 inches PLUS the whole box surrounding it that made it even huger, lol). The thing needed a… stabilizer? stabilizator? Basically a box (the size of an xbox, haha) with a single switch so that a power surge doesn't fry the tv (I think it's what killed our b&w set).

The b&w tv had THREE channel buttons, which was funny cause back then we had TWO channels only.

I got my first computer, an Amiga 600, in 1997. Beginning of the next year, I was already switching to Amiga 1200, on which I remained until 2002 or so. That was when I bought my first pc.

I still don't have a cellphone, heh.

Man, porn on a 28k modem SUCKED, and not in a good way -_-

I remember back in highschool our computers had to be booted up with two floppy drives. The full sized floppies too. Heh, “A” and “B” drive, which is the reason that computers even today call the hard drive “C”, because both “A” and “B” are still reserved for those long obsolete floppy drives. The screens inly had ONE colour: Orange.

We had others that were BBC computers and ran BASIC. … All we did was play educational games on them. But at least they had colour. Limited colour.

We still had to take typing classes, on big clunky typewriters. Not automatic ones, con computerised either. No. Those were standard mechanical simple machines that REALLY hurt your fingers to use. -_-
We learned al about making carbons, using backing sheets to save the role, replacing the ribbons… untangling the keys when they got tangled…

We had a PC in art school. It was in the library office and we were allowed to use it for word processing work to do our reports on.

At uni we had some Power PC Apple Mac comps. And they were oh SO shitty… By that time I had a laptop at home running Win 95 and it was so cool ^_^

Then later on we had fancy imac comps in all their juicy-fruit rainbow colours. Those were much nicer than the Apple Power PCs. And by then I was finally abple to start really using computers for art seriously. I'd had an inkling of that with the Power PCs but they were too slow and crappy, my laptop did a LOT better, the imacs even more so.
Then I got myself a super powered desktop, way more powerful that any Apple on the market. The specs were still pretty good even 5 years later when I replaced it with an even better one, and so on. I got my first tablet for it too (12X12 Wacom), and broadband cable internet.
Going back to uni they had every new species of imac as they came along, as well as the more powerful bretheren- Quicksilver G4s, then G5s etc.



But even though now I'm all computered up, networked, Cintiq , 5.1 sound, multiple flat LCD monitors, with mobile phones everywhere, flat screen TVs etc I know that none of it is really important. It's nice to have, but not essential.
Back in art school I managed nicely with my stinky leather box full of specially mixed acrylic colours in little film canisters, all my sable brushes held in a neat little bundle by a strap inside the lid- I had a stack of drawing books on the go, portable easels set up at home and in my studio. Carbon paper and mirrors…

Moving to computers meant I didn''t have to buy materials any more, storage is no longer the big issue it was, mess disappeared, and setup time is nil, But since comps do so much MORE than art it's a lot harder to retain that old focus I used to have.

I remember a time without the internet, but personally I don't want to go back to that, as the internet has allowed me to do things that weren't even possible before I had it (posting art around the world from my bedroom, speak with people half an ocean away, etc). Although, I will not miss when we had to do that with a dial-up modem.

I still remember Windows 3.1 and having to play PC games through DOS. I also remember when Windows 95 was introduced to our house, and how different it was from 3.1 (What, you have to go to a menu to shut down the computer? What's with this Start button nonsense?)

In a related note, I still remember Apple IIs, but only because my grade school still used them in 1995, long after they went out of date.

Finally, I remember a time when cell phones weren't so commonplace or as fancy as they are now. Personally, I don't mind most of the features a cell phone has, but I think texting is completely worthless. I don't mind new technology, but I do mind stupid technology.

elektro
but I think texting is completely worthless.

It depends on how you use it. I use texting a lot in part of my work, it's very helpful.
It's cheaper than a phone call and you can quickly coordinate meetings with people without having to write down or remember times, addresses, and phone numbers because that can be all part of the SMS.

But they're not good for conversations of course. :)

ozoneocean
We learned al about making carbons

If I ever had to write another report or assignment using carbon copy paper I would kill somebody.

There is always some new technology that I *don't* need or care about, but I wouldn't give up any of the stuff I do use if I could possibly help it. I can be nostalgic about A Time Before The Internet, but then I think about what a giant pain in the ass it was to do anything like look up a phone number, find something on a map, etc. I wouldn't have done any comics if computers weren't around. And so on.

Lonnehart
I still remember a world where the internet didn't exist the way it does today. And a time when color TVs were too expensive to afford. And a time when we didn't have stuff like video games, home video players (VHS and DVD), home computers, cell phones, etc… I can still live without those, but the adjustment now would be excruciating. How about the rest of you? Ever lived without all this tech we have now? Or ever wonder how you would be able to live without it all?

Well I remember a time when cell phones were a bit bigger than they are today and VCR's were more common than DVD players. I just post on these threads to piss everyone off because they're all twice if not three times the age off me and actually remember the twentieth century. And some day I'll be an old curmudgeon complaining about hover cars and holographic televisions. So my day will come soon enough.

Heh… I remember the first “portable” phones… basically they were phones installed in your car. And they were very expensive yet unreliable.

Technology has changed a lot in the past century or so. Yet we still don't have our flying cars (thank goodness), holographic entertainment systems or spaceships. I watched a lot of tech shows as a child, and they predicted that we'd have all this stuff at the end of the last century. Perhaps in the next century you'll have something to complain about, Walrus. Even better… you'll probably be fitted with cybernetic parts so that you'd live that long, or even longer (I'll be long gone by then). :)

You mean I'll be able to impress the ladies with ma' Go-go-Gadget metal parts? ^^

Lonnehart
I watched a lot of tech shows as a child, and they predicted that we'd have all this stuff at the end of the last century.

Well we DO have video phone wristwatches, but nobody wants them… In fact the whole video phoning thing that is STILL such a trope in all Sci-Fi never really became that popular even though it's been around for years now.

I think people mostly use video communication for news shows, wanky office video conferencing, and sex stuff (over web-cams). -_-

I dont think im ever really gonna reminisce about old technology or the time before it came out. Once somethings obsolete i forget about it after a while. Unless its a game console. Ive had most of them since the nes up. The only thing i remember that all the people i seem to hang around with now (16 year olds) dont remember are cassettes.

Doesn't anyone remember how cool you were if you owned a Walkman? The giant clunky headphones with the huge antenna sticking out? Or boomboxes? And as for cassettes, I still have mine, and even a CD/cassette deck that plays both cause some of my music never got rereleased to CD, so the only way I can keep that stuff is with the original.

I remember those old computers in the school libraries that used those enormous floppy drives. I was always playing Oregon Trail on those things in the library during lunch. I even had an old Beta Mac (just green and black colors) in my room for awhile, although I was too young at the time to really do anything useful with it.
Then years later I played the first Quake game when it came out for the PC- one of the first major games I know of that used polygons in all its graphics instead of just sprites (unlike the original DOOM series, which was polygonal enviornments with sprite objects). That was a HUGE deal for gamers back then.
First real PC our family got was an IBM that ran Windows '95, and we went for several years before we finally got internet. My sister and I fought all the time over who got to use it (she usually won).

ozoneocean
Man, porn on a 28k modem SUCKED, and not in a good way -_-

Used to be that the only way to get porn was to have someone older than you buy you a Playboy and then stash it under your matress and pray to god your parents never found it. Now all you have to do is go to any of about a bajillion free sites on the net, get your fix, then erase your browser history, and your parents are none the wiser. Man, times haves changed.

Dave7
I remember those old computers in the school libraries that used those enormous floppy drives.

Wow… the 5' 1/2“ floppy drives? Had those in high school. Apple IIe's in the computer lab. And I learned ”BASIC“ at that time though I wasn't that great a student (logic is one of my greatest personal weaknesses as I have a hard time of using it). I also remember seeing cheap ”tape drive" computer/famicom knockoffs that came out of Taiwan. When I think about it now I wonder how we got by on tape drives and punch cards without going insane…

cirienphoenix
Doesn't anyone remember how cool you were if you owned a Walkman? The giant clunky headphones with the huge antenna sticking out? Or boomboxes? And as for cassettes, I still have mine, and even a CD/cassette deck that plays both cause some of my music never got rereleased to CD, so the only way I can keep that stuff is with the original.

Good old Walkmans… Then the Discman- which, if it still works will give you better sound than any MP3 player.
Mix-tapes…
I still have records, but I almost never listen to them. There's a good reason why those were supplanted (you always have to remove dust from them and the needle, they're so huge, fragile and prone to damage in a million different ways, the sound is NOT better than CDs, you can't skip tracks, even the needle can damage them if you knock it by accident etc.)
I even have some of my dad's big old reel to reel tapes. Nothing is more bothersome than those -_-

Dave7
older than you buy you a Playboy

Hey, I used to buy playboy. :)

Lonnehart
Wow… the 5' 1/2" floppy drives?

I remember my Commodore 64. It was huge and loud. But… It had the best helicopter game ever. Choplifter. I use to play it a couple hours everyday. We held onto that computer until my grandmother bought us a Windows 98 with a secondary DOS bootup option. My mom killed that computer within a couple months of owning it (she somehow rewrote part of the code rather than loading a game) and then a few years later my Uncle gave us his Compaq with Windows ME.

The Commodore was significantly more reliable than windows ME was. Good times, haha.

ozoneocean
Hey, I used to buy playboy.

I remember in first grade we had an old mac with a one-colour green screen that we used to play Oregon trail on. I still can't figure out how we ever managed to hit anything in the hunting game. There was also this fish game where you chose a fish and then lived out it's life by either avoiding the predators as something like a chub or ate smaller fish as a predator.

In third grade I remember one of the teachers had to come into my class to ask if anyone knew anything about computers. Naturally, the only hands that went up were myself and another student. Not even our teacher knew. So we went down the hall to another room where this teacher couldn't figure out how to turn on an old Compaq with windows 98 on it. I flipped the switch on back and it just turned on. At the time, I didn't realize it, but we embarrassed the living hell out of our teachers.

Heck, last year I bought a box of old RAM chips to turn into a Japanese war helmet for a project, and they were all 8 mb and smaller. The biggest one in the box was a server chip, at a whopping 16 mb. My cell phone at 3 years old had more power.

Truth be told though, as much as I use technology I wouldn't have too hard a time switching. All my work is done traditionally and just assembled digitally, and I grew up without a dependence on the stuff. The hardest part would probably be learning and remembering phone numbers. For the most part I still entertain myself by reading books and going outside. I might not know of as much good music or movies as I do now without technology, but I doubt I'd care about the fact that I didn't know without it.

Lonnehart
Ever lived without all this tech we have now? Or ever wonder how you would be able to live without it all?

I try to quit World of Warcraft every few months, but I always come back to it. It has seriously become an addiction for me. I try to stay away from it and do non-computer related activities (like drawing), but I eventually end up getting bored and yearn for a time-sucking activity like WoW.

Unfortunately I fell victim to the wonders of technology even when I was a kid. I would play Atari all day with my brother, and play games like King's Quest and Space Quest on our PC (complete with DOS). Then in high school I was introduced to the Internet, and it was pretty much downhill from there. I still vividly remember looking up research on Netscape for a French class project. I think it took a couple hours to bring up one website.

With my recent acquisition of an iPhone, my downfall has been complete. Decent internet on a phone? Nay, I say! 'Tis the work of the devil lol!

I remember my Commodore 64. It was huge and loud. But… It had the best helicopter game ever. Choplifter.

Commodore 64 & Choplifter ROCKED. lol! I recall Bruce Lee for Commodore:

I remember.

Makes me wonder what it must've been like for the cavemen. All they had were sticks and stones. Oh… and fire.

Then again they had a lot more to worry about. Like how they were gonna get more food and what to get… and what was going to eat them later…

Lonnehart
Then again they had a lot more to worry about. Like how they were gonna get more food and what to get… and what was going to eat them later…

I dunno… I imagine cave-people lived pretty ok lives. They would've sussed the food and predator situation pretty quickly. Their real worries would've been disease and general lack of medical care. They seemed to do ok as far as artistic expression (sculpture, cave painting etc.), and communication would've been limited to the family groups and small community groups in which they lived.- all very central and compact- not spread out like us, so they'd have no need of phones, internet etc.
Communication with other groups would've been done by representatives of the whole group, so again they've no need of more advanced tech in that respect.
The recording of culture and knowledge was done mainly through complicated ritual and oral tradition- so they'd no need of written communication tech either.

My first computer displayed 800x600 resolution with 256 colours. Played many DOS games on it, made many MSpaint scribbles. Enough to bloat the hard drive. And I didn't want to delete even one of them, because I was a dumb little kid.
My first game console was an N64, to play Pokemon and Mario on. Those graphics blew me away.
I remember the VCR well. My family didn't get a DVD player for a while after DVDs became commonplace. In five years from now, the family MAY either own a Bluray player or a HDTV. Maybe.
Floppy disks were something I used at school until 2005. The computers at school were all old. USB ports were all behind the computer, what a pain. It was easier to use floppy disks.

…I feel like the youngest person in this thread.

I grew up with this. I remember as a kid it took me a year to finish. My mum would only allow me on the computer for half an hour everyday and some days i wasnt allowed because of school.

Lonnehart
Makes me wonder what it must've been like for the cavemen. All they had were sticks and stones. Oh… and fire.

Stories. They told each other stories. Probably got a kick out of scaring the little kids with bear stories. Then of course the kids were always doing something dumb that everybody could laugh about. And naturally every tribe had at least one idiot.

The top hunters always had good stories about battling the beasts.

The women were constantly yakking with each other about this and that.

And they had art. Making stone tools was an art/craft. They made clothes. More arts and crafts. And they painted pictures on the walls of the caves.

They probably danced and sang.

And they worked so hard to survive that they were probably pretty tired at the end of the day and slept a long time at night and had lots of dreams.

Oh. Sex. Major entertainment there. And eating food. Sometimes the obvious things get overlooked. :)

I remember fondly the days when people didn't have their noses buried in a cellphone screen 24/7 while walking in public.

It's very difficult for me to be honest. The only reason I DO remember not having these things is because of the fact that my first memory was when I was a year old. That was 1990/91.

When I first experienced these new (and old) technologies I was at the age most kids nowadays are first exposed to them anyway. I wasn't aware that these things were new. I thought they'd always been around and that I was only just finding out about them.

The one thing I definitely remember not seeing or having before was portable mp3 players. I didn't get my first one until I was 14 and even then it was a glorified pen drive even by the standards of the day… Six years ago. I'd been recording my own tapes and programming my own cds for years and I wasn't happy to see those experiences die.

Good thing the latter still has a way to go before it's obsolete.

Oh, and DVDs. Didn't get one of those until ‘03 or something. Blu ray isn’t that much different in it's basic design so I don't count that as anything really new. The same with newer mobile phone models. They're “improvements”, not new objects altogether. You can still buy your camera and music players separate. And they take better pictures and store more tracks anyway.

Even with the internet I remember downloading stuff for games in the late 90s and watching flash movies and videos. It's how I found out more information about the millenium bug despite my parents trying to keep quiet about it in case I freaked out. I even used it for research in a school project on Billy Connolly.

Man, you lot are making me feel old…

My family did not even have a TV until I was 16.

Growing up in the australian bush we made our own entertainment, exploring for many miles in every direction, building cubby houses, paddock-bashing in old cars, etc etc.

My dad got one of the first mobile phones available back in the late 80's… early 90's I got a lighter, more portable version (which was about 1kg and you had to carry it around in a specially made bag the size of a large woman's handbag (the handbag I meant, not the woman being large).

For most of the 90's I lived in a big bus, travelling around the country. We used candle power and gas so once again, no TV.

I wish I could live today without a ‘doorbell that anyone can ring at any time’ (a mobile).

WHile I do love and use the latest technology every day, I certainly do not miss it. Too may people today don't take a break from it.

I hate it when my son (now 20) brings his phone with him when we go on bushwalks… we might be way out in the hills, a hundred miles from the nearest human, enjoying the peace and serenity when ‘DINGADANGADOOBADING’… “Hey, man, what's up?” etc etc etc……. : (

To me, that is worse than someone's phone ringing in the movies.

Mind you, he hasn't come on a bush walk with us for quite some time now, he prefers to be inconstant contact with his mates, surfing and partying on (sigh).

Today's tech is brilliant, but I do feel sorry for this generation. They never get any real time to themselves, constantly ‘in touch’ with friends.

Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, I now remember fondly when for someone to contact you they had to send a letter, or call a landline and hope you were in the house. When you were alone with your thoughts, you were truly alone, with no risk of your reverie being disturbed by telemarketers or friends.

(The first ten years of my life, even our phone was one of those with the little handle that you spun, then told teh operator what number you wanted… now I DO feel old)

Okay… I'm starting to wonder how old you really are, Cartoon Professor. Or maybe television simply arrived later in your area.

I certainly missed the old days when we only had ONE TV. The entire family would gather around and watch a lot of shows. That tradition hasn't died out, thankfully. When I visit my sister and her family we'd sit for hours with her kids and husband in front of the TV (and my “mother in law” from my sister's marriage would join in as well) and we'd discuss the show afterward with a cup of coffee while the kids play the Wii.

And your cell phones can reach far into the desert??? I'm sure it's annoying, but at least it won't be like in the old days when you got in trouble out there and had to hope that an aeroplane could spot you in that expanse. :)