Nice People Thread Part 9 - and so it continues

PasturesNew

I remember something called Compuserve as the way most people got online from home in "the early days" - that was a hefty monthly fee, plus a hefty cost per minute. So only for the middle classes/wealthy.

I didn't get Internet at home, via dial up, until 1996.97 - and then was charged per minute, so very limited use. It wasn't until 2000 that I got a broadband service.

I was doing OU in 1995-1997 and they had a direct dial-in service, which you could go and post in a cafe/forum. You'd dial in, eventually find that, post, then go back 3 days later to see nobody else had been.

That was "normal" back then - specific companies had a specific phone number you dialled up to log into.

LydiaJ

zagubov wrote: »

I've got a feeling that the future's going to be a lot more like austerity-era Britain than the relative prosperity we've got now.

I suspect our parents would get along with it just fine but we're too spoilt to adjust to it.

It feels as though we're too spoilt to adjust, but in fact people do adjust to all sorts of things when they really have to. We don't want to, and we don't start adjusting soon enough, so that we don't adjust well, but in the end if the circumstances have changed, we end up having to live with how the world is. I feel as though I have been too spoilt by the last 44 years of perfect vision to adjust to having glasses, but as I increasingly can't read without them, adjusting is being forced on me whether I like it or not.

zagubov

PasturesNew wrote: »

That's because you had it through the JANET system though, which was built by research/University FOR research/University. So you were cocooned in an environment that had a freely available tool not available elsewhere.

Back in the 80's I was in a research institute where you looked for all the relevant papers for your dissertation via an online search at the library.

It was at a weird time in the evening when a satellite could link you to a supercomputer in a university in Rome. A printer made a deafening creaming noise as it typed reams and reams of joined up paper with names of papers that had the remotest connection with your subject.

I thin all printers were noisy back then. My dad had a Preswtel machine ( a BBC BASIC computer linked via a modem to a portable telly). It was the post office's version of the Internet, and it resembled the Teletext/Oracle service that TV offered and that is only available to travel agents now (I think).

The BBS used to broadcast a chirping noise late at night on the radio . You recorded it on a cassette and it would progarmee a game onto your computer- it was billed as the Takeaway from the Chip Shop.

To be honest, the whole setup didn't look like it had much potential at all, to me at least.

zagubov

PasturesNew wrote: »

I remember something called Compuserve as the way most people got online from home in "the early days" - that was a hefty monthly fee, plus a hefty cost per minute. So only for the middle classes/wealthy.

I didn't get Internet at home, via dial up, until 1996.97 - and then was charged per minute, so very limited use. It wasn't until 2000 that I got a broadband service.

I was doing OU in 1995-1997 and they had a direct dial-in service, which you could go and post in a cafe/forum. You'd dial in, eventually find that, post, then go back 3 days later to see nobody else had been.

That was "normal" back then - specific companies had a specific phone number you dialled up to log into.

That was when I was working for the OU and I hadn't heard of that so I presume it must have been piloted on a limited number of courses. It was still all VHS videocassettes, BBC2 programmes in the early morning- we learned never to think of it as late night broadcasts or we'd miss it!

Oh yes and tons of envelopes with packages of printed material!

Was Compuserve the service where your email address was just a number-string?

PasturesNew

zagubov wrote: »

That was when I was working for the OU and I hadn't heard of that so I presume it must have been piloted on a limited number of courses. It was still all VHS videocassettes, BBC2 programmes in the early morning- we learned never to think of it as late night broadcasts or we'd miss it!

Oh yes and tons of envelopes with packages of printed material!

Was Compuserve the service where your email address was just a number-string?

I did T102, M205, M353 and M357. So, IT based. Even so, it was a rubbish system that nobody used.

OU materials would get delivered to my house, then left outside by the postman all day, propped up against my door in the rain/whatever. I borrowed a video player in the first 1-2 years, but in my 3rd year I didn't have one, so had to get up to watch the programme or forever miss it.

PasturesNew

zagubov wrote: »

I've got a feeling that the future's going to be a lot more like austerity-era Britain than the relative prosperity we've got now.

I never really had "the good years", so I'm used to the austerity

lostinrates

zagubov wrote: »

I've got a feeling that the future's going to be a lot more like austerity-era Britain than the relative prosperity we've got now.

I suspect our parents would get along with it just fine but we're too spoilt to adjust to it.

I was a very very late internet adopter. It would have made my masters degree immensely easier if I'd had access to it.

I miss Tomorrow's World. I remember James Burke doing a TV special waaaay back int he 70s which predicted a future where we'd all live in cell-like high-rise apartments and rarely go out as we'd each have a wall-sized TV screen that would give us all the world's information. Hmmm. :think:

Whose parents? Some of us might have less than some of the parents/ grandparents in our families.


I was telling DH about tomorrow's world recently. It was a good programme. Why did it stop? I would think it engaged a lot of people, particularly young people, in those fields of development and science for inspiration.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I read it as meaning that for many younger people their only experiences in life have been of the good years; parents/grandparents can remember their childhood when things were tough.

My mum had to go to the gas works in the war with a pram to get coal for the coal fire. A two mile walk, four miles return. That sort of stuff.

And she was lucky - she HAD a gas works to walk to!

And like our (my?) childhoods - no heating in the upstairs, just one coal fire downstairs. Ice on the inside of windows in the morning.

I still have ice on inside of windows :rotfl:

Tbh, I think it was not that uncommon in 'upper middle class' households when 'I was young', and I am pretty sure I'm younger than Zag. My mother and dh's father didn't have to walk for coal, or fuel if any sort, any where, the staff would have gone if necessary.

Experience is can be generalised to generations of course ( accept if we are to say on this board baby boomers got a good run )

LydiaJ

Being warm enough is a big factor in my sense of emotional well being. Life would have to be very austere indeed before I would go back to the ice on the inside of the windows that I remember from my childhood. There are a lot of other comforts that I would jettison first. For example, a big rise in fuel prices would see me start cycling 2.5 miles to work (or 3.5 if having to go via DD's school to drop her off) rather than driving, but my home would still be warm. Other people's priorities would probably be different.

vivatifosi

zagubov wrote: »

That was when I was working for the OU and I hadn't heard of that so I presume it must have been piloted on a limited number of courses. It was still all VHS videocassettes, BBC2 programmes in the early morning- we learned never to think of it as late night broadcasts or we'd miss it!

Oh yes and tons of envelopes with packages of printed material!

Was Compuserve the service where your email address was just a number-string?

I finished my OU degree in 1997 and that didn't touch the internet. I did all D courses except for one U course and now fully expect to be kicked off the NPT for not being scientific enough.

In my defence, I'm now married to a scientist, who occasionally tries to explain things like Schodingers wave equation and the aptly named P vs NP, but for the most part gives up. Actually, his main concern is that I will get on a plane and not understand the mechanics of flight. I call him Sheldon, he calls me Penny, though in real life he's not quite as geeky and sadly I'm older and not as good looking.