There have been many changes in technology during our lifetime, especially during my generation. Being a generation Y-er, we had the majority of the tech boom; Digital everything, C.D.’s, Cell phones, LCD T.V.’s, portable computers just to name a few. But the one thing that changed everything has to be the internet. Isn’t it crazy that we will have to one day, explain to our children, that there was a time in our life when we didn’t have the internet!
Everyone old enough remembers the time of no internet. Internet? We barely had computers when I was growing up! Looking around now, kids have computers with open access to everything and some schools give kids a laptop or personal desktops to work with all school year ‘round. When I was in elementary school we had maybe 20 apple CPU’s with monitors the size of Buick’s for the entire school. When we had “computer lab time”, which was about once every three months, we didn’t surf the net or listen to podcasts, no, we played Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail was great, watching our 1-D, black and white wagon move across a non-animated background like a puppet show with paper cut outs on sticks. Shoving that giant floppy disk in and typing in the MS-DOS code was the best part of the school year for me, even though the computer took half the class period to load the game up. They came out with an upgrade for Oregon Trail a couple years later, in all color with a bad-ass scene where you forged a river and hunted for buffalo and rabbits (I’m still waiting for a newer version where instead of people getting typhoid and bitten by a snake, they would get AIDS, Cancer from cell phone use and gunshot wounds….. and they would be driving in a wood panel station wagon instead of a horse drawn wagon)… Some will also remember other games like Number Munchers (the prime number game) and that math game where you had to figure out at what price to charge for your apples to make the most profit. Much cooler then getting to check your Facebook account all day.
Everyone old enough remembers the time of no internet. Internet? We barely had computers when I was growing up! Looking around now, kids have computers with open access to everything and some schools give kids a laptop or personal desktops to work with all school year ‘round. When I was in elementary school we had maybe 20 apple CPU’s with monitors the size of Buick’s for the entire school. When we had “computer lab time”, which was about once every three months, we didn’t surf the net or listen to podcasts, no, we played Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail was great, watching our 1-D, black and white wagon move across a non-animated background like a puppet show with paper cut outs on sticks. Shoving that giant floppy disk in and typing in the MS-DOS code was the best part of the school year for me, even though the computer took half the class period to load the game up. They came out with an upgrade for Oregon Trail a couple years later, in all color with a bad-ass scene where you forged a river and hunted for buffalo and rabbits (I’m still waiting for a newer version where instead of people getting typhoid and bitten by a snake, they would get AIDS, Cancer from cell phone use and gunshot wounds….. and they would be driving in a wood panel station wagon instead of a horse drawn wagon)… Some will also remember other games like Number Munchers (the prime number game) and that math game where you had to figure out at what price to charge for your apples to make the most profit. Much cooler then getting to check your Facebook account all day.
My kids won’t even get to go through the awkward phase of dial up internet connection. Imagine not only trying to explain what a dial up connection is, but the noise they put with it…. Well first, you heard a dial tone, and then it sounds like someone is dialing one of 6 local internet numbers you chose based on your location. After that it sounds like your computer was connected to a heart monitor, flat-lines, and then has a pinball tournament while a slinky walks down a long stair case. Following the heart attack and pinball tournament you hear static for about 3 minutes, ranging from mildly annoying to the most annoying sound in the world. 12 and ½ minutes later and after what sounded like a space shuttle just left your computer, you heard those glorious words…… “Welcome, you have mail”. Why couldn’t they create a less annoying tune to go along with this process…Maybe some elevator music, Michael Bolton, Asia, or perhaps a recording of Rosanne singing the national anthem.
When my kids grow up I will have to explain that we had to call in our pizza order, record shows on a VCR, buy CD’S at the store, and find out what people are doing by actually asking them instead of reading it on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter. Get the popcorn and Capri sun, it should be an interesting bedtime story!!
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