I guess I’m curious about generations (namely GenZ and Alpha) who didn’t live in a pre-Internet time. Like,
- How was the concept first explained to you, or when did it click?
- Do you understand how insane it is to have the aggregate of all human knowledge — the only comparable thing once being a physical library or university — one search away? That it’s absolutely insane you can engage in a real-time conversation with someone on the opposite side of the world? That you can find niche communities in an instant?
- Were your parents super strict about internet usage? How quickly did you find workarounds?
This was mostly my experience too. I don’t think the Internet itself was as big of a game changer as the advent of smart phones. My day to day didn’t change too much from a pre Internet life to a post Internet life until smart phones came along. Once everyone was able to access the Internet from their pocket is when things really changed.
Mine did, Internet meant mmorpgs. From like 5th grade to junior year, I’d basically just come home and play until like 5 then sleep for two hours then do it again. The jump from dial up to cable was another big thing for us.
that was not my experience, as my world completely changed with the internet. smart phones had a massive impact by making it portable, but it wasn’t so huge since i already was using a mobile phone, a pager, and a PalmPilot. a smartphone was just the next logical progression.
However… for “normies”, i absolutely can see it being the inflection point that really made a lot of disparate and difficult-to-access or -use services much more accessible and simple for novice and casual users. broadband mobile service eased that explosion, especially considering that smartphones became most user’s first highspeed computer and broadband connection.