Memories of "Good Old Days"

[kokopelle]

One of my MySpace friends posted the following:

Close your eyes... And go back...
Before the Internet or the AIM
Before semi automatics and weed
Before playstation2 or X-bOX
Before the 5 hours of homework you put off every night...

The message then listed fun things that people used to do before being hooked into computers. I thought about this, and realized that the "before Internet and AIM" is only 15 years ago. Somehow the internet is now equated with all modern computer technology. I replied:

I close my eyes, remember before the internet, and I see BBSs, the Commodore 64, Fidonet, 5 1/4" disks, and TI-30 calculators.
I also see the 5 hours of homework I was putting off, but I think I was watching the A-Team instead of doing the homework.

It amazes me how fast the "good old days" come along for those who long for them so. Time becomes distorted, longing for the past. Case-in-point, those with memories of weed (gasp!) probably remember it going WAY further back than most of the other items listed.

Remember the good old days? Really???


*EDITED*

With the knowledge that what I saw was probably a chain "inspiration" piece, I found a copy of it if you want to read the entire thing. Sit back and be nostalgic! In defense of the piece... it is about childhood. Most kids aren't worrying about Fidonet. Sadly, I'm one of those people who don't have a super-rosey memory of childhood. My loss...

Comments

[lupini.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the usenet days...now those were flamewars.

Writing one's own menu in DOS.

MacMail on the Macintosh SE! We were "messaging" long before anyone else.

:sigh:

[greensh.livejournal.com]

Fidonet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet) combined with my QWK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWK) reader made my Commodore 64 a message reading machine. Somewhere I've got 50,000+ tag lines that I stripped off of the messages that came through my fidonet connection. Whatever happened to taglines? They didn't seem to make the leap to internet e-mail in any great amount.

[lupini.livejournal.com]

I think that as email became so overwhelming, people got tired of reading the same taglines over and over. It's become so commonplace to communicate by email, that many people have the attitude of "Just the facts, please--no eye candy needed, don't have the time for it." Plus, there are a few taglines I *wouldn't* want sent to some folks--remembering whether I need to be diplomatic or not got to be too much work. I eventually just removed the automatic taglines rather than have someone take issue with something.

I also think that the novelty and anonymity of the early BBS/usnets made it more fun to use taglines...like planting little Easter eggs of the "true" us. :-) Or sometimes the us we wished we really were. :grin:

I too have a few files of those...somewhere :scratches head: There were some damn good quotes in taglines--and I can remember having to clean my monitor a few times.

:shakes self: Back to cursing the work email servers for being down.