Feeling Old
This statistic made Joe Carter feel old:
…based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 25 percent of all Americans alive at this moment have never known a world without the Internet and Internet access. That represents 75 million Americans who consider going online as natural as turning on the TV or cooking something in the microwave oven.
I suppose, then, it makes me feel doubly old, because of the comparison they use… I can remember a time when my family, growing up, did not have a microwave. In fact, I remember that at that time, “TV dinners” were not something you microwaved, you cooked them in the oven. And you couldn’t have cooked them in the microwave even if you’d wanted to – the packaging was all made of aluminum foil… (And it tasted like it, too!)
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I’m an American that was born the year before AOL was founded, so I’ve not known a ‘world without Internet’- and I’m much more comfortable using the Internet than I am turning on the TV or using a microwave.
What does that make me? Young?
Yes.
I remember back in college (mid-late ’80s) there was a chat network they called BITNET. I don’t know what BIT actually stood for (althought I can make a reasonable guess), but some called it the “Because It’s There NETwork”. If I recall correctly, it was only linked between educational networks, and not available to the general public.
We all thought it was the greatest thing ever invented – and then the WWW came along a few years later and made BITNET seem like two tin cans and a string.