The Internet Is Off

So, do I remember life before the Internet? Yeah, sure! In fact, we lose connectivity a couple of times a year. And someone will say “The Internet is off”, so that brings it all back 😀.

My youth and early adult life were spent without computers and the Internet. I’m quite nostalgic about all that, but I’m glad I’ve made it as far as the Internet.

It’s interesting because I don’t really remember anyone anticipating such a thing in my earlier life. We thought of robots, living on the moon and flying cars. But my dad once said that in the future, your television will print your daily newspaper. He wasn’t too far off. When I was a child, computers were like robots – the sort of thing you’d see in science fiction shows.

• We played the pong TV game at home in the mid-seventies.
• In April 1980, I remember going to a personal computer exhibition in the Victoria Hotel in Patrick’s Street Cork. The hotel is long gone. I didn’t really see the point in personal computers. My friend was quite keen on getting one though, but they were way out of our price range.
• In 1983, I went to some sort of an exhibition in the Science Museum in London, and the point was made that communications would be the big thing in the near future, but I didn’t really understand what it entailed.
• In Thomond College of Education, Limerick, in 1984, when I was training to be a teacher, we used computers to do BASIC computer programming, but again, I didn’t see the point. It seemed like a glorified pocket calculator. I was aware that people were getting computers such as the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum for home use, but I just saw these as TV games.
• In 1991, I got an Amstrad PCW 9512 for word processing. I did mess around with programming. I started thinking that it might be nice to get an IBM-compatible PC.
• I first heard about the Internet around 1995. It just seemed like a nice little add-on for a PC, like a CD-ROM. Maybe you’d buy a CD or DVD, and you’d get a link to a website about the artist or film. Initially, it was all quite boring.
• I bought a proper Dell PC in 1996, with Microsoft Windows 3.11, which I later upgraded to Windows 95. I generally used it for word processing, but I bought a few games too, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator and Encarta Encyclopaedia. It’s funny how impressive these educational CD-ROMs seemed at the time, but I much prefer Wikipedia now.
• I first got dial-up Internet in 1997. I remember being introduced to email around the same time, but I never used it much in the 1990s. I remember using Yahoo and Netscape Navigator. Google arrived around 2000.
• I think I had broadband at college and work a few years after and broadband at home in the mid noughties. Over the next few years, we got youTube, iPhones, Facebook and Spotify. And soon all my work was done over the Web. For leisure, I particularly like Google Earth and Streetview. In Streetview, it’s fun to see what’s changed over the years by changing the settings from 2008 to various years between then and now. Maybe someday, someone will model the earth over the centuries. So I could visit Cork in 600 AD, the time of St Finbar. Or go back to Patrick Street in my teens and visit Pat Egan’s record store. Perhaps someone out there will make it happen 😀.

In some ways, I’m nostalgic about life before the Internet. As a teen, I’d go into a record shop and see lots of records that I couldn’t afford. I might have bought a few second-hand or maybe got a loan of some. And in Ireland, we had just one TV channel up to 1978. It was 1985 before we got multi-channel TV in our house, and we got a video recorder the year before. But now you can get so much on YouTube. It’s tough work trying to watch traditional TV or read a book or listen to a whole LP. The Internet is great but, for whatever reason, life seemed more magical before it. One thing I would never want to go back to is typewriters and Ty-Pex 😀.

As far as the evangelical Christian scene is concerned (which is what this blog is about), the Internet is hugely helpful. Sure, you do get plenty of silly stuff or crazy stuff, but there’s lots of good stuff too. And it’s easier to research what different Christians believe and what different religions believe. I’ve listed some resources that I use on my Recommended Audio Resources page. And YouTube is marvelous for finding old hymns that are long forgotten or familiarizing myself with some of the contemporary worship songs.

With Covid, people watched more online services, and maybe that’s still having an impact on physical church attendance. But I think it’s great to have both. Even in years gone by, we learnt a lot from Christian books and teaching tapes. I don’t think that it’s a good thing to be overly dependent on particular local churches or preachers. It’s no harm to get different perspectives. So yeah, I remember life before the Internet, but I’m pleased to have been around when such a momentous change occurred. It makes me wonder if some other wonderful things that we haven’t even thought of are on the way. I might not live to see them, but I would think that Heaven will be better still 😀.

There’s a Sound On The Wind