What Life Was Like Before the Internet

It's kind of freaky to me sometimes to think that today's kids and young people have never known what the world was like before the Internet. The thought occurred to me when I interviewed a couple of college students for an internship in our department. They were both in kindergarten when email was catching on, and they never had to write a report without the help of a browser. With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to list the many ways in which the Internet has changed our lives - for better or worse. I'm kind of omitting the big picture things here and listing the smaller ways of doing certain things before computers took over our lives. For example...

*I wonder how many kids today know what the Dewey Decimal System was? In elementary school we learned all about it, because that was how we had to find books! Each book that a library acquired meant a librarian had to type or fill out a little card and assign the book a Dewey Decimal number, which would then tell visitors which shelf of the library the book was located. These cards were alphabetized (by title or the author's last name, I think) in little drawers. I seem to remember a scene in Ghostbusters where a librarian is spooked by a ghost and all of the Dewey Decimal cards come flying out of their tiny drawers.

*There was no such thing as Wikipedia, so we had to look up subjects in actual hard copy encyclopedias. I happen to think Wikipedia is far superior since the info is updated in real time - the minute a celeb passes away, Wikipedia already has the entry up-to-date. Amazing!

*Inviting people to a party or gathering meant sending invitations and making phone calls. Yes, without email or social media, getting the word out about a party was done by licking some stamps (we didn't get self-adhesive stamps until 10 or 15 years ago...talk about SO much more work involved back then) or letting your fingers do the walking and your mouth do some talking. At least wedding invites are not immune yet to being sent via snail mail. 

*Reviews of products and services were strictly spread by in-person word-of-mouth. Yelp, InsiderPages, and other popular reviewing sites have changed the way we can pre-screen restaurants and other businesses. In a matter of seconds, we can see the opinions of hundreds of customers and what the rating average was. In the past, we found out from our friends, neighbors, family members, coworkers and other acquaintances if The Regal Beagle bar really was up to their standards.

*We had to wait sometimes to get the latest news. Before the Internet, your news sources were limited to TV, radio, and the daily morning paper.

*Shopping had to be done in person. Whether you were looking to buy clothes, groceries, appliances or records, before the Internet you had to physically get your butt down into a store to make a purchase.

*People met and dated in more traditional ways, not just online dating. I'm not knocking online dating; I've done it before and plan on doing it again, but I'm reminded of a 70s article I found once that surveyed single adults on how they get dates. Most of their romantic relationships started through mutual friends, at work, or at a bar. In other words, the only way of meeting other people was by actually meeting other people in person, not on a dating site. And if you wanted to ask someone out? You had to actually pick up the phone and make a call. And growing up, in my neighborhood if we wanted to play with our neighbors' children (many of whom I already knew through school) we'd just ring each other's doorbells or simply show up at their house and hope they'd already be outside fooling around with the bikes or jumping rope.

Well, these are just off the top of my head. So what would you readers list that I've forgotten? Do you think life is better or worse thanks to the Internet, or just...different?