Meerkat Prompts: Life BI (Before Internet)
This greymuzzle certainly does remember a time prior to the World Wide Web. I remember the first family PC, which enabled the means to type up documents and play rudimentary games, and not a lot else. I had a mobile phone with no internet access whatsoever. There was no streaming music, no means of long-range chat save for calling someone (and usually via a landline), and certainly no social media.
Was it an easier time? I don’t know. My experience of a web-free world was as a kid. Indeed, by the time I was in secondary school, we had the internet at home, and it wasn’t too soon later that it reached my school. I do recall a lot of single-player video games, as opposed to today’s massive multiplayer experiences, and I think that has shaped my preference for games. I think there’s something to be said for visiting friends face-to-face, which I did as a kid, without the distraction of the net.
Nonetheless, much of my life has been lived in the digital era. I am not at all sure how I would manage in a net-less world, and I think that probably applies to most of us, even those who grew up without the web. The ease of communicating with others, even across vast distances, has transformed a great many things. Imagine having to make a phone call to someone overseas, without the cost-saving measures of WhatsApp or Skype?! I’ve been there, and I can tell you, it’s very limiting! It also goes without saying that Meerkat Musings was not something I even had the means to conceptualise as a kid.
It could be suggested that I was more carefree in BI times, though this could also have been down to me being a kid. However, it is worth pondering the impact that a a bombardment of information, including disinformation, has on developing minds. We are switched on, and expected to be switched on, all the time. I never had to worry about that when I was young.
