Hey old guys, what did people do in before computers/internet?

I no longer go out and get drunk!...thank god my job depends on it!...I use to go almost every night of the week...no longer! ...now i am stay at home drunk on the PC

There is more information in 1 week of NY Times than everything a person ever learned in his life 100yrs ago.

The main form of communication was print - newspapers, books, writing letters. TV was the means of indoctrination for everybody.

Ideas tended to be localized. So I grew up in DC, and had no idea what NYC was like, or any appeal it might hold.

New movie? Had to see an ad in the paper. Review? Had to be printed the day you were checking.

The Phone was a Tool not a Security blanket.

The News papers had news not celebrities.

Spent most of our spare time Hunting,Fishing and playing

some form of Team Sport.

All that while most of us had part time jobs.

new fangled internet wrote:

spent most of my time running, reading, and chasing skirts

What he did. One and three are almost the same. At the end did I reach my goal.

We didn't miss what we didn't have.

Read newspapers, magazines, and books for entertainment. Looked up info in an encyclopedia, dictionary or went to the library to find articles in those newspapers, magazines, and books.

Watched the 3-14 channels of tv we got and liked it. Listened to the radio and records.

That being said, I would not want to go back to that way.

In high school, we learned how to program a computer in BASIC language even though our school had no computers.

I never ran a vcr until I was in college.

I used to read a lot more magazines and books. Most of my internet reading replaces the kind of light reading I got mostly from magazines back before 1995 or so. I still subscribe to Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic, but I used to get Track & Field News, Climbing, Backpacker, Velonews (and some other bike magazines), and also wasted an incredible amount of time reading cycling, climbing, or car magazines at newstands or bookstores. Now I waste an incredible amount of time reading similar (but more up to the minute, with opinions from everyone) stuff on the internet. I used to go to the bookstore frequently - now I might go to a bookstore once or twice a year - and it would be to find a gift, not to browse. I still like the library, though I don't go as much as I used to.

The internet has also replaced my TV viewing. I sometimes go weeks (sometimes more than a month) without turning the TV on. I pretty much only have it on for special events like track meets, the Olympics, or program like the documentary "Our National Parks - America's Best Idea". I don't have any TV programs that I follow like I used to (sitcoms, 11 pm TV news, late night programs).

As somewhat of a gear nut, I used to visit bike shops a lot in my teens and 20s, and backpacking/climbing shops in my 20's. Now I window shop/do purchase research on the internet. I used to have to go into shops or make requests through the mail to collect brochures/catalogs and other information on gear.

I spend no time at all in CD/record stores now. I used to listen to my CDs, but now I pretty much only listen to the radio (NPR mostly), or watch/listen to music on Youtube.

I was never a movie goer, but I used to rent videos or borrow them from the library. Now, I rarely watch any movie length stuff - mostly Youtube stuff.

I used to run a lot more... but that's probably age and having a real job more than the internet. I still spend tons of time outside.

Funny, check this out.

Every National Geographic since 1888 for $50. I love the internet.

Are there any lawyers out there under forty who learned how to dictate? From my perspective, all new lawyers since around 1995 type everything themselves.

We didn't drink water out of plastic bottles and all that other crap you younguns do that kills ya. We were healthier so there was no such thing as ED. Anyway- I had sex all the freaking time. It was constant sex because there was no internet and not much else to do.

It was the running boom, so runners were cool. We'd go to a bar or nightclub and we were cool because we ran in the 10K that day. 5k's were the fun run for old people and the girls we'd pick up later in the nightclub.

Oh, and we ran, a lot, and drank, a lot. Watched MTV because it was constant music videos.

God, it was fun. We were just passionate about everything we did.

Seriously, there was less to do and we were more passionate about what we did.

Before the computer/internet there was no letsrun...

...so there was a lot of pent-up frustration and angst out there among 15 minute 5K guys who had no way of anonymously bashing 13:30 guys for not running sub 13.

So there was no "porn" for 80% of this forum.

Can't believe nobody has related this thread to race results yet. I'm only 44 but remember running races and waiting for results. If it was a big race, top finishers MIGHT be in the next days paper. If not, you could wait a month or two for complete results to be mailed out. Or there were regional newsletters that some guy would do on a typewriter (no wordprocessors)that might contain area results from the last 2-3 months.

Getting HS results from other parts of the COUNTY was harder than getting results from other parts of the COUNTRY now (ie Trevor Dubar sub 9 2mi in the snow).

Now, I'm chapped if complete results aren't online within 2-3 hours of getting home.

As for measuring distance...something like maymyrun.com would have been right up there with the Jetsons. I remember getting a city map from the local chamber of commerce and tracing my loops around town with a ruler (1" = 1/2 mile or something like that)and drawing them in different colored pencils. It got better when I was old enough to drive and could measure routes that way (but had to drive them twice, just to make sure).

Man, I was (am) a dork!

49 yr old male.

Answer: We talked to each other. In person.

Long distance meant spending more for a phone call. It seemed a little more romantic when you sent a lady a letter while you were gone to college or boot camp.

you had to put up with people lying about race results you could not confirm but knew to not be true. in the internet era, there is no longer any place to hide.

I'm in my early 40s, and when comparing life before and after available internet, I'm always struck by how fraud has exploded in the last 15 years. It's so easy for criminals to commit financial crimes now. Any private investigator can tell you how simple it is to access personal banking information. I've had to deal with 3 counts of identity theft in 10 years. The internet has made life infinitely easier and more profitable for criminals (particularly pedophiles). Access to information has a down side.

Hustler, Penthouse, Playboy.

Off the Grid wrote:

There is more information in 1 week of NY Times than everything a person ever learned in his life 100yrs ago.

The main form of communication was print - newspapers, books, writing letters. TV was the means of indoctrination for everybody.

Ideas tended to be localized. So I grew up in DC, and had no idea what NYC was like, or any appeal it might hold.

New movie? Had to see an ad in the paper. Review? Had to be printed the day you were checking.

The first sentence of your post is full of shit.

We read books, newspapers, and magazines, for starters. We went to libraries. We used encyclopedias. After about 1980 we had CNN, but before that we got most of our news from Walter Cronkite.

We made long-distance phone calls that cost a ton. We wrote letters on stationery. We posed very carefully for pictures, because film was expensive. We carried a dime (later a quarter) for the pay phone.

Up until the 1990s, it was more-or-less possible to have read (or be familiar with) "everything" in certain fields (meaning everything major and recognized, if the field were limited enough--for example, mine was medieval British history) if you subscribed to the right journals and such. Similarly, if you were really well-informed about a sport (like running), there were certain books that were canon (like Sheehan and Fixx), and only a few pros were at a knowledge level higher than that.

other Swede wrote:

Can't believe nobody has related this thread to race results yet. I'm only 44 but remember running races and waiting for results.

I'm 46 and for the most part I've had the opposite experience. Most races I ran in the 70's and 80's would compile and mimeograph or photocopy results while waiting for awards. I usually left a race with a copy of the complete results in my hand. Now I get told they'll put the results on the website. Only the big races get this up the same day, most take several days, and some never appear. The Turkey Trot I ran this year used chip timing but took 5 days to get results up. So much for the efficiency of computers.

Yeah, seriously, in the '80s, I never remember leaving a race without knowing what the results were. They would actually post them at the races.