Daddy? What was the world like before the internet?

There’s a huge discussion on Fark.com based on a brilliant question:

Youngish [Fark user] has no comprehension what her adult life would be like without the internet or computer technology. Describe your pre-internet life

It’s a brilliant question because the potential answers are so big. Baby Bigmouth wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the internet – I met Mrs Bigmouth online – and my job wouldn’t exist without it either. And yet the whole thing has happened in a very short space of time, so Baby B was born into a world where the things we already take for granted – broadband, YouTube, Google, iTunes, Facebook – are all just a few years old. And eventually she’s going to ask me, what were things like before the internet?

What would you say? Would you sound like a Daily Mail reader, hankering for a simpler time? Or would you be more like the Yorkshiremen in the Monty Python sketch where they exaggerate the awfulness of their upbringings? Is answering the question like trying to explain what the world was like before fire, electricity and the wheel?


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