Was it fascinating? Did it feel like the amazing future? Were you all too aware of the mounting cost relative to what you were actually doing?

  • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Before the internet, there really was only 1 viewpoint and 1 viewpoint only on the news.

    Absolutely, though it went beyond the news. Culture in general was much more monolithic. You could start a conversation with any random person about the previous evening’s episode of Gunsmoke or MASH or Cheers and there was a very good chance they had watched it. It’s hard to overstate how much more diverse culture has become in the Internet era, for better and for worse.

    • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      5 months ago

      Culture in general was much more monolithic

      That’s interesting - I didn’t experience the advent of the internet like that, probably because I’m from a fairly multicultural background and travelled at lot at that time. I lived near DC for a few months in 1976 and went on a three-week road trip around California in 1990 and did notice how isolated from the rest of the world Americans in general seemed, especially outside the big cities. I was a real novelty, exotic even, and I’m a white cis het woman. Just with a funny accent, from a country they’d never heard of.

      • connect@programming.devOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 months ago

        I grew up in the rural US, and my family was acquainted with a family who lived in a neighboring state and had a summer home nearby.

        They were so exotic, yes. Just looking at a car with a plate from a different state was a novelty. I wish I’d been bold enough to talk with them myself, but then again my mother probably would have discouraged it.

        When I was first working, my officemate was from that state, and I was kind of impressed that he’d made the globe-trotting jet-setting move of coming to a whole other state. (No, I’d never been to another state myself at the time.)