What did you do before you had access to the Internet?

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I used a computer to log on to dial up local bbs that had txt files, programs etc for downloading and messages and had store and foward email like fidonet. And used computers in play games. Did alot of reading before age 12 had no tv before than. Now days i read alot online.

I didn't have a computer until I was 14, but not many people had computers and video games when I was a kid.

I used to play with my toys, read, draw, watch TV, play pretend, hang out with friends, walk to the shops, do stuff outside, ride my bike.

Read a lot, played video games, slept, listened to loads of music. Same really except I play more games on the computer, listen to most of my music on the computer and do most of my reading online now...

Read. Read and watch TV.

I used to read 3-8 books a week checked out from the public library. I also used to rent movies every Friday or go to the theater and shell out $7.50 at the 22 screen multi-plex downtown. Since I got my own computer last year, I haven't been to the library (I owe $75+ for overdue books ) and without a job for cash flow, I've been stuck at home. The computer has been my only connection outside of this boring, hick town and without it, my brain would've gone into antrophy.

I recently started working again and with more money, I now can go outside my home for enjoyment. Yesterday, after reflecting on how I've spent so much time doing nothing but "making love", as my friend said, to my computer, I went to the fair that comes here every fall and had a blast going on rides, petting goats, rabbits, a camel, an emu and other livestock. I also was awed by the arts and crafts exibition, the youth talent contest, watched a pig race and the Grand Funk Railroad concert.

After having all that fun, I don't think I'll be spending as much time in front of my computer screen anymore.

Read books, watch TV, make up stories in my head.

flew around the galaxy in giant cubes and assimilated people

I can't remember

I used to read article after article in an encyclopedia.

Lets see here.....

Internet arrived at my house in late 1996. Lets see here... Hmmm.... What did I do before that. Lets pick things up in 1993 at the start of junior high school for me and the start of my soul searching years.

Early 1993 - I had a deep obsession with the pop music of the era. Celeine Dion, Annie Lenox, Elton John, Restless Heart, Sting and a few others all had music out that I liked. I knew the lyrics and music to all of them and I would loop them back and forth in my head when ever I didn't have the radio. I also dabbled a bit in model rocketry and electronics, trying to duplicate projects in Popular Electronics. I had recieved for x-mas 1992 a gift subscription to National Geographic magazine and I was heavily into those also.

Summer 1993 - I begin my first summer of solitude, venturing outside the house to engage in the ocassional long and meandering bike ride that led to nowhere, or to build towers out of old lumber in our back yard, and erect them in our garden, seeing how tall I could get them. That summer was rather rainy. When I watched TV it was mainly shows on nickelodeon like Rocko's Modern Life, Ren & Stimpy, Looney Tunes, and What would you do? on Nickelodeon.

My dad insisted on me getting a job - as a matter of fact he said I had no choice. The summer before he was upset that I had not looked for work (I was 12 and just out of grade school) and made a point to me that I was going to have a job in 1993 or else, and arranged one with one of his friends who was the owner of local card shop. So every wedensday for four to six hours I would be there doing tasks such as painting and mowing the grass and other menial task. I was paid under the table for my work as I was underage.

Fall 1993 thru June 1994 - I was in 8th grade, and at school I fell into the social group with all the other outcasts. My parents forbid me to see them, as they felt they were a bad influence on me, but for me it was the only thing I had. Thru this group I was introduced to the wonders of marijunana, tobacco and to a small extent - alcohol, which I used at times as a coping mechanism for the intense bullying I experienced that year. The music was also good again during this period, and I now had a recorder in which to record things off the radio. I still have a tape of airchecks from December 1993 laying around in my house

Summer 1994 - I set foot in town only about four times that summer. I isolated myself in my room with the windows blocked out and immersed myself in nothing. I made money by mowing the neigbhors grass for him

Autum 1994 - I'm a high school freshmen with no real focus and no social life. There's not any one older than me at school to bully me so instead I was shunned and verbally bullied by like aged peers. The school library gets a computer connected to this "information super highway" thingy thru and ISDN connection and it's the most popular computer at school, even more so than the computer with the 1993 groliers encyclopeida on CD-ROM which resided in a caddy-loaded 1X CD-ROM drive that was larger than the mac it was attached to!

At home I continued my social isolation doing as little as possible.

Winter, Spring 1995 - I hate school, I can't get a break at all. All my time at home is spent exploring and disasembling a crap load of electronics my dad gathered up just so I could do something. My dad gets me a pirated copy of Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.5. It sparks my interest in computer programming.

Summer 1995 - I'm done with junior high school. On the last day after the final bell I ran around thru the courtyard in front of school flapping my arms, screaming "I'm Free!! I'm Free!!". I get home that night and reflect upon the last hellish three years and I break down and cry, realizing I had just survived the worst period in my life.

I returned to a ritual that I stopped in 1992, in killing time by slowing riding my bike in a figure 8 pattern in my driveway for hours on end. My dad also gets an RC car from radio shack and I play with that.

Autum 1995 thru Fall 1996 - I'm in high school now as a sophomore. I have a math teacher who can't figure out how to use an Apple ][gs computer. My mother decides she wants more for herself than what's she's getting at home and my parents have an amicable seperation. She moves down to milwaukee, and since my dad works at night, my biggest wish to be left alone and not have someone breathing down my neck all the time comes true.

I felt liberated and estatic with this new sense of freedom. At night I begin exploring in great ernest, the wonders of C-band satellite. My interest in QuickBASIC programming continues on un-abaited. For nearly a year this went one.

Then one day in late 1996, my dad informed me that one of my uncles had convinced him to subsribe to the internet. Suddenly I had the whole world at my fingertips. My love for the internet and the unlimited amount of knowledge it offered superceded anything else I might have done in the past. I no longer had to venture out of the house to explore my interests. I could just type it into an search engine like infoseek and have it at my finger tips.

Summer 1997 was the first summer where I actually talked to people online with similar interests, and I also downloaded a radical new program called ICQ which allowed for instant messenging.

WOW.. That was long.

BEFORE THE INTERNET? Well, I had an amiga 500, a 2400 modem (I bet some of you only know about 33.6/56k modems eh? imagine how slow a 2.4k modem is) and a massive list of bulletin boards that I used to dial into. it was like a virtual internet where to get to the site you had to dial direct. As soon as the internet appeared I got out a big loan got a PC and a subscription... ISP's cost a fortune back then.

Before that? CB's.... before that? I played mostly on my spectrum and with my lego and struggled with growing up.

LEGO
Oh, drawing.
TV
The usual.