Posted on February 13, 2008
How Quickly Times Changes – A Look Back Before the Internet
BY JENNIFER EUBANKS
Recently Rand over at SEOmoz wrote an amusing post about things that have changed since the rise of the internet. He also mused how "the current 25-30 year old age group is essentially the last generation to experience a pre-Internet childhood." If you stop to think about it, this is entirely true, and it's still a bit too soon to tell how it will influence the way the next generations view their technology-filled youth and what lays in store for the children of our children.
Rand mentions several tasks and experiences we had that will never be relevant again, and will be relegated to those tales of "when I was young we didn't have the internet, and we had to look things up in BOOKS!" and the like. It's easy to take for granted all of the information available at our fingertips and to forget that the data did not always come so effortlessly. It's even more astonishing once you realize that this information revolution has only really spanned the last decade or so.
Now that we are used to the constant barrage of information and being constantly connected, it is often hard to break away. Even more real to some is the sense of panic that comes when they are not able to rely on their computers or cell phones. Take, for example, this clip of a segment that aired a year ago on the Today Show. The Managing Editor of Forbes agreed to go a week without technology, and he broke down in tears and demanded his phones back before he even hit the 48 hour mark.
Have we become too dependent on electronic gadgets for our own good? Or do they serve to keep us more closely connected with family, friends, and colleagues, allowing us to interact on deeper levels than were possible pre-Internet and cell phones?
I am going to tell my grandkids one day about life before the internet... the "good old days" where we looked things up in the library, drove with no MapQuest, etc.