I’m actually just a bit younger than you. We had it because my dad worked at Bell Labs and Scientific Atlanta way back when, so we could get the hook ups and build out whatever computing or network machinery we needed at the time. It was like sci-fi legos learning it as I grew up. It was great!
Southloop
joined 4 years ago
Half my duties at my first job as a maitre de at an Italian restaurant.
I can’t help but picture this being the size of a cinder block, like something tied to the gas station bathroom door’s key.
Your library of self-made notebooks were the pelts on the wall of your past game conquests.
Yes! The Harvard Family Health Guide or the American College of Physicians Home Medical Guide! And my dad always bought every new edition of the Green Beret Medical Handbook!
The typical Fox News addict of today also probably wouldn’t have been caught dead watching anything news related outside of local evening and maybe 20/20 depending on the subject matter. The CNN nerds were still watching though.
There was also a better spread of educational programming in popular circulation (talking NASA-owned TLC days and prior here).
I started flying as a kid and remember getting mad at the GPS messing with my uptake on map reading in Boy Scouts and driving class. I also remember thinking to myself how grateful I was it’d never leave the cockpit and invade my daily life.
An IBM Selectric is the last one I ever used. Meanwhile, I’ve had internet since ‘88 and a family computer in the home since ‘85. I’m described as elder Millinial, but I prefer Digitally Native Gen X frankly.
Books, sketchpads, knitting or some other portable craft, table games like flick football and pocket chess, crystal radios. Plenty to do to pass time. There’s nothing on my phone that’s new.
I do remember people considered “in the know” were much more savvy with consumer protective information. Reviews were treated as reviews from relative or expert opinion rather than validation of taste. There were also options for children, teens (the magazine “Zillions” for example, my first taste of criticizing capitalism provided by Consumer Reports for kids), adults and the elderly.
Now, there’s a much less robust testing, renting, reviewing and demoing environment it feels.
StarTAC! Then I had a Nokia 5100 when I went to college with a blue airbrushed lighting faceplate so it looked like the cover of Ride the Lightning. I might have made three total calls between the two of them and never texted, only partly because it was 10 cents a text.