Random Prompt Generator

What did you do before we had the Internet?

Should I make a list?
• Called people and talked for really long amounts of time
• Listened to lots of music (some from cassette tapes)
• Watched more TV
• Wrote letters on actual paper
• Had weird fandom based pen pal clubs where you sent chain letters to each other
• Looked things up in encyclopedias and even the Yellow Pages
• Called 1-800 for more information
• Wrote in paper journals
• Sent away for catalogs, brochures, and booklets about things we wanted more info on
• Looked up random info at the library, thought I was the only one
• Went to stores
• Played video games on our TV’s
• But mostly I waited, and was patient

Yesterday, while working out I happened to be in front of the TV where the old show “Friends” was playing. This episode was from the third season in 1997. Phoebe meets a foreign man and tries to describe where he is from to Monica, but of course, being Phoebe, she is all confused. She asks Monica if they have an atlas, but they don’t, nor do they have the internet obviously or they could have looked it up. Think back to the set décor on Friends, I don’t remember there being a computer! Later in the episode, Rachel and Ross fight. Ross goes out with the boys and Rachel is pining at home. She picks up this enormous cordless phone and calls him. All the while Rachel is saying: “Please be home, please be home”, because clearly, she isn’t calling his cell phone because he doesn’t have one!!!!

Remember those days where you thought, let them be home to pick up! Wow, that seems like ancient history, not a decade ago. Now, when you call someone, you expect to reach them.

In retrospect, it is somewhat odd that none of the characters on Friends had the trappings of today’s technology. By 2000 more and more people were getting cell phones and those cell phones may not have been fancy, but they also were smaller and no longer sporting antennas. People also had the internet. It was younger and less “webbed”, but it existed. I bought my first cell phone in 2002 and went online in 1999 with WebTV. In 2000 I bought my first computer, an HP. I’m only on my second HP now, though I am on my third cell phone. Now that we have these devices, what will change in the next decade is the way we use them.

Today I read a somewhat interesting article about "unplaugging" for 6 months! The thought of it makes me cringe! Here it is: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_fea_parenting_teens_unplugged