What was life like without the internet?

You can go to a university and pay 25-50k a year to learn computer science or you can take free online classes at CodeAcademy or Coursera and learn computer science at your own pace.

The best and highest paid computer programmers I know are the ones who taught themselves.

I'm not saying that one should substitute the Internet for University but it's becoming easier to learn on your own terms.

You had to look at the bulletin board at a running shoe store to find out about upcoming races.

I am lucky!

You're talking about the good old days. There was no such thing as television, a washing machine, a refrigerator, gas or oil. We had coal for heating, and an icebox for refrigeration. The phone was on the wall and when you picked up the receiver the operator said "Number Please". If you had a party line some unknown persons could be on your phone line. An ice man delivered a block of ice each week for your ice box. A hose drawn cart brought you a bottle of milk each day. The were no snow blowers, golf carts or snow mobiles.

For news we listened to the radio, went to the library or went to a movie. There were news clips before the movie started. Families had dictionaries and Encyclopedias. They taught us in school how to use the library in the school and the one in the town. School teachers used rulers and straps for discipline.

No one had run faster than 2:26 for a marathon and women were not allowed to run anything but the short hurdles and 100 meters. The tracks were dirt, cinders or clay. It appeared that more people were honest and divorces were not common.

But it it was all great fun and we were fitter because we played outdoors and walked to school.

categorically wrote:

If you wanted new programs you had to go a store and buy them. Early on there were only 3.5" floppy discs. So big programs had multiple discs. CDs were called CD-ROMs.

You're a young'un. 3.5" floppy discs were an advancement on the 6.25" REALLY floppy discs.

I haven't dug through this entire string, but I will say this about running/training and the internet: If it had been around when I was running seriously (back in the late Jurassic), I would have found it the single most inspirational thing out there. The fact that anyone can access how serious runners are thinking and training and racing in the way that young people can today would have changed the course of my athletic career (such as it was.) When I was running I felt very isolated. I knew what my Coach and my teammates knew and what I could glean from a couple dozen books (I was an avid collector of information about running.) Nothing compares to the ease with which people can find information and inspiration today.

I think it's the single most important that has happened in track & field and cross-country, bar none.

RichE wrote:

You're a young'un. 3.5" floppy discs were an advancement on the 6.25" REALLY floppy discs.

They were 5-1/4". And before that there were 8" floppies. Of course in those days most home users stored on cassette tape.

Back then, if you wanted to waste your time on pointless arguments with anonymous strangers you'd have to... hmm... er, well you'd... umm... you could always... umm... I mean, there was... uhh hmm...

You know what, on second thought, things were a lot better before the Internet.

After a race in Europe, for instance, you would wait a month or two to read the results in Track and Field News.

Arguments lasted forever because you couldn't just look up the answer.

After you entered your first road race, you would be on a mailing list and you would learn about other races by flyers being mailed to you.

You looked up the world records for track in the Guinness Book of World Records.

You may find a track meet on ABC's Wide World of Sports - no youtube to look at recent or old races.

You could only talk about running among the small group of runners and coaches that you saw in person.

And of coarse you had limited access to porn.

Couldn't agree more .....

It was awesome, you could dump chicks and they wouldn't stalk you on facebook or post pictures of your weewee that you took with their phone as a joke.

I am not that old, but the internet was not a significant part of my life until I went to college. My family of five only had one computer. I would not use the computer for much. Check sports scores, write a paper, maybe do some research for the paper, and I maintained a couple websites. But my day did not revolve around computer/internet work like it does now.

I spent most of my non-school time playing sports, playing video games, watching TV, hanging out with friends, and lots of reading. I would get lost in atlases and encyclopedias and magazines for hours on end.

In my youngest days before I even used the internet, there was lots of sports, toys, reading, riding my bike, hanging out at friends houses. Overall, just more doing stuff rather than sitting in front of this darn screen.

On that note, I am pulling myself away from this screen.

I don't think it was any better or any worse. Kids know more these days, but they are expected to know more. Sure, we did things without computers way back when, but we accomplished much less.

I do remember the anticipation of waiting for the Sunday paper to read the race results. Anticipation was half the fun of everything. There doesn't seem to be as much anticipation these days, but I suppose that kids don't know anything different.

jim jones wrote:

You can go to a university and pay 25-50k a year to learn computer science or you can take free online classes at CodeAcademy or Coursera and learn computer science at your own pace.

The best and highest paid computer programmers I know are the ones who taught themselves.

I'm not saying that one should substitute the Internet for University but it's becoming easier to learn on your own terms.

I live in Silicon Valley and between myself and my close friends we cover all the big names here (Google, Facebook, Microsoft - yes, I know they have headquarters in Seattle, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Cisco, Oracle, Accenture, Ernst & Young, etc. etc.) as well as a ton of smaller startup. I can guarantee you that well over 95% of the top paid software engineers, consultants, database engineers... have advanced degrees from top schools.

Sorry, but that is just the way it is.

Track and Field News wrote:

Local XC and track results showed up in the Sunday paper back then, but only the team scores and top-10 individuals. Something called the state honor roll came out a couple times a season to let you know what was happening across the state. And you'd wait a weeks for your copy of T+F news to come out so that you could read the national results that were outdated as soon as it was mailed.

I had no idea how run-of-the-mill my 1:58 800 was back then. It was a beautiful existence not having to bother with the realities of knowing any different.

It sucked back then. Today it would be pretty good.

Recognizer of Brilliance wrote:

iron and whine wrote:

That is pretty dumb. Do you really think a degree in biochemistry is worthless because someone can just look up the definition of an acid?

Agreed.

Actually, knowledge is more powerful than ever. The information and reach of the Internet allows you to leverage your knowledge to a degree that was not possible in the past. And ignorant fools just look more ignorant than ever when quoting 'facts' that they do not understand which they gleaned from the Internet.

It can be; however, people don't think anymore. I'm talking about real thinking (blood, sweat, tears) where you struggle over something and truly expand your intelligence on a permanent basis. That rarely happens anymore. People want the answer now and are not willing to work for it.

Our discs we never floppy. All us kids had stiff discs when I was young.These music discs came in 33 1/3rpm and 78rpm versions and with a diameter of 12 inches these albums had a number of songs on both sides of the disc. The 45 rpm 7 inch disc, often called a single, had one song on each side.

RichE wrote:

categorically wrote:

If you wanted new programs you had to go a store and buy them. Early on there were only 3.5" floppy discs. So big programs had multiple discs. CDs were called CD-ROMs.

You're a young'un. 3.5" floppy discs were an advancement on the 6.25" REALLY floppy discs.

What was life like without the internet...It was normal, b/c that's what we knew.

However, I still do not know my time from my 1500 meters at the Santa Monica Distance Carnival at Santa Monica CC in May of 1992. Since I somehow didn't get it after the race itself, there was really no way to get it. It ended up being a season best and a PR, but I don't know what the time was. That's life without the internet.

Now people get perturbed when the video is posted a day late

stuff you like to pee out wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Most of the information on the internet is false. And at least half of it is porn.

Before the internet, if you wanted false information you listened to a woman, and if you wanted porn you went to 7/11.

brah, this post is amazing. seriously. i am going to nominate this for post of the day.

congratulations.

ROFL

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