I was reviewing some of the blog posting I tagged earlier this year and there was a great post from Rand on the SEOMoz blog about the ‘last pre-internet generation’.
Essentially it pointed out that for anyone born after about 1980, then their childhood was affected in some way by the internet (assuming they lived in the affluent Western world!).
I remember a conference in the mid 90s in the US when the ‘show stopper’ was a live demonstration of ordering pizza over the internet, with the pizza actually delivered half and hour later!!!
1995 also saw the birth of eBay and Amazon, and MySpace came along four years later. These three sites are still pushing forward the boundaries of the internet.
Rand’s post highlighted the world before websites, search engines and social networks, such as looking for information in encylopedias, dictionaries and phone books. What about the lost art of using library index card systems?
Before eBay, private goods were sold through the local papers classified ads. Now newspapers are struggling as more and more people read their news online.
All in less than 15 years.
So what will you tell your grandchildren about the time before the Internet?
And then there is the ‘Facebook generation’ and those that came before! But that’s for another post….
