Ha ha, minesweeper... I haven't thought about that for a long time.
But someone mentioned Unix. How about those old Usenet boards? It was kind of like an early reddit, with every topic under the sun, but only geeky computer users in the communities. Most people still had no idea what the internet was.
In maybe around fall 1993 (freshman year of college), I was trying to remember who sang a certain song or something like that. I put that question out on some group and had an answer within minutes. That was the first time that I really saw the power of the internet.
I was going to mention Solitaire as well! Minesweeper was fun.
I didn't go online early compared to a lot of people. We had a computer room at school with three or four massive computers in. They had dial-up. Ehhh ohhh eh uh eh uh chhhhhzhzhzhzhzhzhz.
I remember looking at a screen and a photo loading, horizontally, section by section. I remember people having Geocities websites as their homepages.
I despised the internet when it first came out. I remember going to this summer camp that had a computer class, and they had one dial-up connection for the entire camp. So it would take an hour to load a page if it loaded at all. I used the internet in high school as little as possible - only when forced to by my "technology" high school. Then came college and high speed and e-mail and ICQ etc.
In law firms at least, men (and it was mostly men) would be in their offices wearing suits and dictating into tiny cassette tape recorders. Then they'd give those tiny cassettes to a (female) secretary who would transcribe whatever the lawyer said into a document, using an old-school typewriter. The lawyer would then edit that document with a red pen, and give it back to the secretary to create a final version. Then the secretary would put that document into the US mail to the client, opposing counsel, or whomever, or a "runner" (not to be confused with a real runner, or even jogger ... although they might be that, or even a cyclist) would hurriedly hand-deliver that document to a courthouse -- usually right before a deadline -- where it would be date-stamped by hand by a court clerk.
This all of course took much more time and was far less efficient than the lawyer just typing a document or email him/herself (note the possibility of a female lawyer now) and doing whatever is necessary with it on his/her own computer.
I think this is a good response and an example of how less was done back then.
You can do things faster now. They once thought that efficiency would lead to shorter work weeks and more leisure. Instead it’s lead really to more productively and people working at least the same amount of hours.
I'm not convinced less work was done pre-internet. The internet provides the most effective means of wasting time ever invented. In the 1980s you could not sit around reading a newspaper without people noticing. And you could only spend so much time talking to co-workers - assuming you actually enjoyed talking with them.
That left not much to do except work. The only thing you could do on your computer was word processing, Lotus 123 and a few basic graphics programs. There wasn't the unlimited opportunity for time-wasting we have now.
Today someone can spend all day on a PC and not accomplish a minute of productive work (I am guilty of this myself). So even though we have the tools to be much more productive today we also have endless distractions.
I'm a millennial. I am curious what office life was like before the internet.
Were people more productive?
Were there fewer BS jobs that could be accomplished in three hours per day?
Before the internet, the typical office environment was relatively austere. Most workers in offices often had wooden desks, task lights, and writing blotters. Bookkeepers had a mechanical adding machine. Secretaries usually had a typewriter, a comfortable mattress, and a hook to hang her bosses clothes while he was unclothed. There was little attention paid to ergonomics and health.
Before the era when word-processing machines and electronic networks for paperless text-based communication proliferated, people working in offices also used lots of
typewriters and electric typewriters;
typewriter ribbons;
typing paper, which came in varying grades of weight, thickness, rag content and quality;
office stationery known as letterhead;
pens, pencils, notepads, legal pads and cheap, low-quality "scratch paper;"
typeface correcting fluid like White-out and Liquid Paper - when IBM introduced Selectrics with built-in correction film it was a big deal;
special pencil-shaped ink-type "correction wands" with an ink eraser on one end and a little brush to sweep away the tiny particles of paper, ink and eraser rubber on the other;
scissors and glue sticks to "cut and paste" passages of text in documents;
carbon paper and tissue paper - aka "flimsies" - to make carbon copies of what was typed;
big machines generically known as "Xerox machines" to copy other kinds of documents;
vast numbers of filing cabinets to store all the paper copies;
toner and ink cartridges for the copying machines;
reams of copy paper for the copying machines;
paper clips, binder clips, staplers, staples, staple-removers, ring binders and report covers;
envelopes of various sizes, including "circulating manilas" used to send stuff from one person to another in-office or within the building;
desktop baskets or trays labelled "In," "Out" and "Pending" to differentiate paperwork that was incoming and hadn't been looked at yet from the stuff that was outgoing and the other stuff that you had glanced at but not dealt with yet;
paper memos and "while you were out" message pads;
small desktop stands with a sharp 6" tall vertical metal spike in the middle, to put message slips on after you'd read and dealt with them;
paper recycling bins and shredders;
postage stamps - or postage scales and DIY postage metering machines;
other kinds of ink stamps for use on paper ("Confidential," "Urgent," etc.);
Back in the 70's and 80's I was doing computer work. In the 70's we had to use punched cards for our programs. That took a lot of time, The boss was hard-line, none of this "working from home" stuff. We had computer printouts, lots of them. People didn't understand the best ways to write code as the "best practices" were still being sorted out.
And yes EVERYONE (but me it seems) smoked. My clothes smelled permanently like cigarette smoke. Many people did drink at lunch. I only did that a few times. There was more interaction between the sexes with none of this sexual harassment training although the harassment did occur. Most of it was just flirting (often instigated by women towards men) something you rarely see any longer.
Christmas parties were of two flavors: The "office" party with no spouses and things might get wild for people. The official office party with spouses was always fun. Companies didn't worry about being sued because their employees got drunk. Today, the nice Christmas parties that people used to have are as rare as hen's teeth.
If you were a runner and it got out you were considered nuts.
But we didn't have cell phones meaning that the office couldn't always easily reach you. Messages had to be relayed to you.
And we went home at night and spent quality time with the family and were ready to rock and roll again the next morning.
vast numbers of filing cabinets to store all the paper copies;
Indeed. One time the law group I was with was planning to move into a building that was being newly constructed. We thus had the opportunity for some customizations. One thing we decided to do to save space was to transition from regular metal filing cabinets to a high-density mobile shelving system. Problem was, our offices would be on the 2nd floor, not on the 1st floor that was on a poured concrete foundation. So to handle the extra weight of this shelving system, the building designers had to re-engineer things and add additional steel support beams so they 2nd floor didn't collapse under the weight of our files.
This all worked great for a few years ... until the whole legal team went paperless, rendering the shelving system and all the heavy paper stored in it obsolete.
What office “workers” do now. Absolutely nothing of importance. The real workers don’t go to an office. Office “jobs” are for lazy people whom don’t want to really work.
Not sure what you do but some needs to organize, plan, contact and pay all these real workers.
The "internet" was around long, long, long before most realize. And email, Gopher, WAIS, and Usenet were a thing. I wasn't in the workforce much before then, but work was not a lot different. Phones, in general, were more the thing. Once you had your own answering machine, even moreso. Once you could call your answering machine from anywhere and get messages, that was phenomenal.
Any of you "dinosaurs" around? What was office life like before the internet? I have to imagine the pace was less hectic, but perhaps I'm wrong. I often think about how much better it must've been when you didn't have to wor...