Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

It's hard to imagine, but I can remember a day when we used paper for everything. Paper (light cardboard, actually) for library catalogues. Paper for books and news. Paper for all of my notes, my papers, bills and statements. Photos that were created by dipping paper into liquids! Typesetting machines. Paper clips. LP albums on vinyl. Sure, there were radio and television, but we never did anything with those, we just watched and listened (though I do remember the great CB craze of the 70s (you could predict a lot of the internet just by knowing about CB). "If we're the last people in history to know life before the internet, we are also the only ones who will ever speak, as it were, both languages. We are the only fluent translators of Before and After." Quite so. And as one who stood tall in the Before, let me tell you, the after is better. So much better.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 01:45 a.m.

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