07 August 2010

So, what did you do before the internet?


Did you know that the birth of the internet was in 1969? Yeah, that was a long time ago.

It wasn't until 12 years later, in 1981 that IBM introduced the first PC.

Followed by Apple in 1984.

Which, BTW, makes Randi one year older than Apple.

What we now know as the World Wide Web began in 1990.

Which, BTW, makes Ross one year older than the World Wide Web.

By the end of 1992 there were 26 publicly accessible sites. Twenty-six.

Only 4 years later there were a quarter of a million!

Google was launched in 1998. Which makes me and Jim . . . well, a lot older than Google.

There are currently 1.8 billion users on the internet and 23.8 billion live web pages.

Up slightly from 26 in 1992.

Which brings me to a conversation we (me, Jim, and Ross) had recently. Ross had seen this Shoebox Blog cartoon

which led to his asking "So, what did you do before the internet/Google?"

To which Jim replied "We just didn't think about it. We didn't know anything else. If you couldn't find it in the daily newspaper, on TV, or at the public library, you were $#!% outta luck."

Those were the days.

Right?

1 comment:

  1. I used to spend a lot more time at the library...and we have three levels of the Britannica...plus for several years we got the yearly updates. I actually still use the encyclopedias at times, but reach for the Internet every day to research and even learned sometimes to check a book and see if the info is the same and have learned not to trust Wikipedia 100%. I like certain data bases available through the public library. You can access magazines through those, too.

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