The last generation who experienced pre-internet society

Our first computer wasn’t really a computer – it ran through the aerial socket on the TV and all the games were on cassette – they didn’t always load right so sometimes you’d sit there for like 20 minutes and then it would crash so you’d start again. 

I remember my Dad brought home a second hand PC that he’d been given via his job. It ran Windows 3.11 (That was even before Windows 95!) in comparison to now it was prehistoric but it meant I could type up my school work which was a real novelty! 

I think we might have been one of the first in my class to have internet at home but it was dial up and was only allowed to be used when you couldn’t find what you needed from the library. 

I think I did benefit not getting the internet until I was in my teens because it meant I had to look for the information I needed whereas it’s instant now – You don’t know who the vice president of the US is – you google it – you want to know something about the Bible – you tweet for it. 

We have a 12yo living with us the moment as he’s going through the stages to become our foster son. If he’s not sleeping doing homework or watching TV, he’s watching YouTube videos or playing Playstation! Even when we made cookies the other day the TV was on in the background and he wanted to go on the playstation while they were cooking. 

I think we try to limit it by getting him to read more because as much as we want him to enjoy himself his education in the grand scheme comes first. 

When I tell people that we’re living through an incredible revolution in communication they often look at me blankly. But when I remind them how far we’ve come in just a few years, they start to understand. And the revolution is, I believe, far from over.

While some churches and Christians have embraced the changes and opportunities it brings, church in general is a slow adopter. And I’m not just talking about those who still prefer to sing pre-twentieth century hymns!

Many of those who grew up pre-internet have established patterns of life that do not include so much of what’s now on offer online. Unfortunately, that leads them to look down on things such as social media. Because I talk quite a lot about Twitter, Facebook and the like (it’s how I earn a living), I often encounter these negative attitudes.

As for me – I remember television in black and white and only three channels. If you missed your favourite programme, it was gone. In a way I’m glad to be living through the change, and I’m fascinated to see where we’ll be in 10-20 years time.

I suppose it helps to have a purposeful approach to using the power available to us. I am developing a more intentional internet ethic and hope, if I had kids, I would be able to pass this on. It’s a wonderful thing generation Y value communication skills to the degree they do. Personally I like quiet occasionally. Once I have had some input from somewhere I like to be able to filter and process before I output i.e) I journal/draw or discuss*. If I don’t do this I often have a sense of frustration. My time seems to have been spent worthlessly (*or pray).

How we use our brains over time obviously affects them and my school life was much less interactive than school appears to be currently and much more “sit and listen.” It may have been a feature of my education provider, but following a teacher’s example was an important element in the discipline and learning process of my school’s life. Teachers provided for us the model of how to learn.

Nowadays there is more choice available to in terms of our learning models. Obviously a feature of getting older is learning from the young ‘uns but I think it’s interesting that all kinds of people profiles can influence my daily life through the way I use and interact with technology, from private companies to shareware or freeware software to public bodies and official government agencies or simply a collection of my friends.Generation net have grown up with this.

When I was at school there were teachers I preferred to others and I think generally I learned better from those I liked. I think it’s fascinating that Gen Y don’t have to have this interpersonal mediation as they learn. For them, it’s optional. They can learn about a topic entirely without a teacher. Revolutionary!

This is very different from my own experience as a child and mid teen. As an adult, I love the feeling of control the internet gives me. I use the web a lot for problem solving. I use it for learning informally. The internet is a fast way to share life with others, and this could be a different motivator for younger people. Perhaps they use it to play and have fun more than they do to learn. I think its interesting that online relationships and click patterns can be so nuanced. Advertisers are picking up on this and beginning to tailor their adverts the way a teacher crafts their lessons. I’m not making a value judgment or saying this is good or bad. It’s simply new and different and if I were a parent I’d like to be aware of what and how my kids were learning because teachers are so significant in a child’s life and have a significant impact upon their progress and development. I need to be aware of it myself too ;)

What always interests me is how the internet and technology has changed the way children learn at school. I just missed out on all of that – at my school, the computer rooms were full of ancient Acorn 3000s and we got to use them once a week for an hour. When schoolchildren do projects and research now it’s not a case of going to the library and getting all the info from books, or the ‘high tech’ option of ‘our day’ (encyclopedia software) – all info can be found online. I wonder how much ‘going to the library’ goes on these days?!

I suppose I consider myself in the middle of all this because having access to the internet at home started to become common through my teenage years, so my agegroup is the one that cut its online teeth on chatrooms, celebrity fansites and building personal Geocities pages. Even then, though, it wasn’t used the way it is now. It’s funny because even among my agegroup, there is a definite split between people who are very into social media, blogging etc and those who, for example might only use the internet for shopping, Facebook etc and very much consider the other things, including having friends who you’ve met online, ’sad’ or ‘geeky’.

I do think we rely on the internet for absolutely anything these days to the extent that we don’t consider using any other methods of gathering information. That must seem strange to older generations who aren’t technologically savvy at all. And I worry that children will become immersed in all things computer-related to the extent that they won’t be interested in anything else. I think parents need to be firm about limiting time spent on these things, considering whether it really is necessary for their five year old to have this gadget or that gadget, all of which cost a fair amount of money.

Interesting proposal about Jesus’ return being announced on Twitter – I could imagine that happening!

At the risk of being pedantic though, I think we’re a long way off from every eye seeing a computer – 70% of the world’s population currently don’t even have access to the Internet, let alone tweeting on their iPhones. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

I think it’s good to occasionally remind ourselves that what we mean by ‘our generation’ is in fact a global minority of rich westerners and that life is very different for the two thirds
world.
(NB not trying to get at anyone here, all points made are still valid!)

My children (7 and 4) definitely work things out very quickly on my ipad, iphone or macbook. It’s very intuitive for them. My concern as a parent is how to balance technology with a more tactile and physical way of learning about the world. I want them to roll in the grass, climb trees and build camps, not only play angry-birds.

 I’m also concerned that the internet has not only made good information readily available to all, but it’s also made the worst of information readily available. Shielding my children’s young minds from the worst of the internet is real responsibility. And then teaching them as they get older to be able to self-moderate what they expose themselves to. It’s a real challenge.

I want my children to be tech savvy, but I want it to be a higher priority  to teach them how to have the times of quiet conversation.  I want them to enjoy talking to friends and family face to face.  I want them to enjoy talking to God, quietly.  I want them to not lose the art of socializing and being active.

Basically, I want them to enjoy technology in moderation, just like anything else.

I think we did benefit from growing up in a world without internet, cell phones and personal computers.  I am not anti-tech but rather the opposite, I embrace a lot new tech and integrate it into my business and lifestyle making things better, faster and easier.  But we had to work harder, namely at intentional communication and information gathering.  I believe this produces character and a work ethic that is sadly missing in so many in this next generation.

I do think that all the gaming and entertainment based devices limit creativity.
They also fuel our need to be constantly entertained. We are so entertainment based that we don’t have room for quiet time. Time with God, Time with family, Time spent learning to play an instrument well.

For every generation there will be something new, which inevitably leads to something being lost. My parents bemoaned the fact that they never saw anyone playing pick-up-sticks or jacks anymore. I probably ought to point out that I was born in the early 80s. Technology was always a late arriver in our house. I don’t think we got dial-up internet until about 1999, shortly before I left home for uni.

Some things will take a long time to die away. Last Christmas I had the joy of teaching my eldest niece how to play chess. This year, she’s after revenge! There is also the simple joy of kicking a ball about enjoyed by all of my nieces and nephews.

What will be interesting is how our generation and the one below will be affected psychologically in the long term. Last year, a chap called Nicholas Carr wrote a book called The Shallows which explored how the internet affects our brains. I’ve not read it yet, but it’s on my reading list, and it comes highly recommended to me. Perhaps you’ve beaten me to it?

What I find interesting to ponder is what would happen all our technological crutches were suddenly taken away from us. Do we still, as a collective, have enough skills to be able to keep together a coherent, productive society without the internet and its associated technology. I’m not convinced we do; I know I would struggle.

I use technology by the hour, at least (especially when I have a deadline but am reading blogs instead!), so I cannot say it is not important in my life. But I often feel like it’s a shame that it is. I had my phone nicked at the weekend and I can honestly say I have not missed it. It is so strange that these blocks of plastic and wiring become the epicentre in the running of our days; I don’t know if that’s a good thing. 
I was lucky enough to grow up in the countryside without a TV (born 1991, so not long ago!) and I realise how unique that was. My childhood memories are mostly of running about in our large garden inventing our own worlds to play in or making houses out of cardboard .. Most of my friends remember “that show on TV”… I always long to get back to those days of freedom. I watched I Robot the other day and was slightly worried as I could imagine that happening! But hey, I’m sure God saw it coming and has a big plan.
When I got my first phone, it was a Sony Ericsson, the screen was black and white, about two lines of squared black text long and the functions were minimal but I was in awe!  

What bowl haircut? ;-) 

Seriously though, I remember a time without home computers or mobile phones of any kind, even for the rich. Culture has changed so much, growing up we used to be able to leave front doors unlocked, playing on the streets with footballs or on our bikes, everyone knew each other and there was simply more trust and more physical interaction. Now interaction online is just as real as physical interaction, but there is something about physical interaction you can’t replicate, and the digital revolution, whilst having so many benefits – with more to come – has not helped with the deteriotration of physical interaction with people.

I have always said you need to have a healthy balance of digital interaction/relationships and physical – both are real, but you need both I think. This is why good church community is so important, because it gives us proper, local, physical interaction. In the original creation we were designed to interact physically, and there is something unique about physical interaction – and we should never lose that. We need to find a way of balancing our digital interactions and physical ones, and also bring our culture back round to the idea of local, physical community, working together, in relationship. Digital community is very important and very real, for sure, but we must never lose physical community from our lives either – its finding that balance that is the key, and part of God’s rhythm for our lives. God wants us to build relationship and community – and that applies digitally and physically – not one or the other. Relationship is at the heart of the rhythm God made for us, our relationship with Him and relationships with each other.  The digital realm and internet has been brilliant and improved the world in amazing ways, and it’s an incredible resource which can be used for great good and where relationships can be built. But I would never encourage people to abandon physical interaction for the digital realm, that’s simply not healthy. It’s all about the balance between the two.

Yes, yes, yes!  BBC Micros were cutting edge technology at my school!  And you were only allowed to do ‘computing’ if you were doing A level maths until my year group campaigned to all be allowed to do it.

Also remember the girl with the blackboard and waiting for Pebble Mill at One to finish to watch about 1/2hr of kids TV.

I was bullied at school and I think that had the internet/social media been around then it could have been worse so in that way I’m glad I didn’t have that to deal with.  I do think I have learned more through not having automatic spell checking, google to hand for all the research etc.

That said, I can’t imagine life without Facebook, Twitter, blogging now!

I remember when there was only one pc in our department and on another floor. I also remember when the company i worked for only had one email address for all staff.
I use the internet to help find out about good books to read. So it has helped my reading awareness.
A good discussion starter.

I was at uni in 92 and my mind was blown when a friend showed me how a terminal in Guildford could retrieve data from the USA in seconds. The state-of-the-art recording studio had automation running on a huge computer and data stored on 7.5″ floppy discs with a massive ?720k of memory

Going back a couple of generations, my grandad was headteacher of a brand new secondary school. Between hundreds of kids and dozens of staff, the Post Office laid a single phone wire to the single phone in the school, on his desk!
Later, they were one of the first schools to use a modem to have access to the county computer – half an hour a week!

It’s not just the kids who spend too long on the internet/tv (simultaneously!). But we did use imagination a lot more then than ours do now -despite having boxes of lego, drawers of pens, shelves heaving with toys… It’s the lack of them making things from the very basics that worries me.

I still remember constantly bugging my parents for a computer and then the Internet while growing up! I suppose one thing I miss is the fact that so much communication through digital media (as great and far-reaching as it is) has become shorter and less meaninful unless the individuals have the time to back it up with face to face meetings and conversations. I genuinely love the Internet and social networking for their potential to reach, connect and engage with others! Skype is an ongoing blessing to me (though I used to use NetMeeting – an Internet Phone software application which shipped with just about every vesrion of Windows since 95 and used by about 10 people, ha ha!) for keeping in touch with friends and family abroad but I still belive that nothing will beat a conversation had face-to-face, being able to look into someones eyes (as opposed to a camera) or being able to hold hands etc. Can’t beat that with a stick!

Still, one thing I’ve noticed is that (whether this is true or not) the Internet has become a “need” in our lives with regard to work. When I was growing up and did work on our family computer, not having the Internet wasn’t really an issue (though I used to complain!) but now, so much of my work as a church-based youth worker hangs on being able to get it – e-mailing organisations, staying in touch with young people, parents etc., the net is used for just about everything, and the WIFI going is “literally the end of all life as we know it” in the office! Should this be the case? I don’t know.

On one hand I see a shift that has taken place as the net has taken a greater role in our lives from “Netmeeting”: I could use this to call my aunt oversees to “Skype”: I (assume that I) will be able to videoconference with this client at said time etc. etc. I feel we take it for granted – being an always on phenomenon with wired/wireless broadband connections (I still remember the days of clicking a link, going and getting some food or drink, coming back, reading a page, clicking another link… ha ha, dialup!) it has become an expectiation in our lives and can feel somewhat bereaved without it! On the other, I see it being used to effectively get the word out on issues of injustice and need and being put to fantastic use! So there are positives to the ubiquity of the Internet too.

I think that if and when I have kids of my own, there will be limits to Internet use, quite simply because the real world is where the adventure is – the place where we can see one another face to face, hold one another with our hands and know one another in personal and powerful ways that even a touch screen can’t touch!

Well, I did play with a BBC B Micro as a teenager, but the one major blessing of a non-internet up-growing (is that what we call it?!) is the fact that my wife and I still have all the letters we used to write to each other while dating.  Memories!  Our newly-married daughter communicated a lot by Facebook, Skype, text & mobile before her wedding… and doesn’t have that record of a growing relationship.