Do you remember life before the internet?

Life before the internet

I am 77. Born in 1946, I could write a tome about pre-internet communication and interaction. For the moment two reflections will suffice.

The first example of difference relates to urgent communication pre-internet and pre-modern telephone communication.

Urgent messages were sent by telegram. The sender would go to a post office and pay two shillings and sixpence for a telegram of twelve words (maximum) including the name and address of the receiver. That is $2.85 in today’s currency.

The sending post office relayed the message via phone to the post office nearest to where the message recipient lived. The message was hand copied onto a telegram form, placed into an envelope, and given to a post office junior who delivered it, usually on a bicycle to the recipient.

This process was the way urgent messages were transmitted from sender to receiver for decades.

I am drawing on personal experience to illustrate the second instance of life before the internet.

In 1972 and 1973, I earned extra money by reporting on football and basketball for a country newspaper printed – linotype printing – in Perrh each Wednesday for distribution on Thursday and Friday.

Football was played on Sundays. I had to round up the details of the games played at four different locations, type up my report on an Olivetti typewriter, drive it 25 kilometres to a pick-up point and give it to the driver of a road transport bus for delivery on Tuesday morning to the newspaper office for inclusion in the paper’s sports pages.

The Internet has made what were elongated and complex communications processes, so much simpler and easier to manage.