14 thoughts on “Information

  1. Estela says:

    Agreed! Talking to strangers was not my strong suite back in the day. Luckily, I have gotten better at it…but I still find icebreaker exercises and group projects to be quite horrid.

    1. gabe says:

      Me too! getting to relate and having more insight sure helps a lot.

  2. Chris Sobieniak says:

    I suppose I was in that “shy” category, mainly since I didn’t think nobody was that interested in what I wanted to say! But yes, those were interesting times when you did have to put in that extra effort to get anything.

    1. gabe says:

      Wow, you are lucky. I was always joining conversations late and not knowing what was going on 🙂

  3. Manny says:

    Ah yes. I was just discussing this with my kids recently. Fads also lasted a lot longer because it wasn’t immediately replaced by the next thing. PAC MAN, DRAGON’s LAIR, RUBIK’S CUBE, etc… may not have had the shelf life now that it did then. 5 days seems to be the average internet rate of decay in most instances.

    1. gabe says:

      Wow, 5 days! Geeze! I remember things lasting forever–I still like a lot of that stuff,

      1. Chris Sobieniak says:

        I do too, I feel sorry for today’s tots and the things the forget about soon enough.

  4. Wolf says:

    I was that kid up until college. Always the odd man out, the last to know. Or even to know anything…

  5. The worst by far, was trying to call a girl at this time. If you could muster up the strength to actually make the call, you’d always wind up talking to the girls parents and if you were shy that might kill the whole deal.

    1. gabe says:

      Or that horrible busy signal…

  6. James Childress says:

    The NWS had in some cities a phone answering service with the recorded weather. It was about as up to the minute as you could get before the internet took off. If you knew someone with access to a Telex machine like my dad did (the original internet) you could dial in for the latest news. Unfortunately it was about as expensive as a telephone call.

    1. gabe says:

      Wow, that sounds cool. I never even heard of that before.

      1. James Childress says:

        Yep in you watch old dramatizations of newsrooms you might hear a rhythmic sound in the background. That is what it was. You could almost sleep to it if it wasn’t so loud. Telex machines were glorified electric typewriters with a modem. Newspapers and television stations got their newsfeeds that way for years. If you wanted to save content on the printout without needing to dial back in, you turned on a side machine that turned the text data into tickertape. A thin strip of paper about an inch wide with holes punched into it. It could be read back again to make copies. Photocopies weren’t cheap so just retyping it made sense if you wanted extra copies.

        1. gabe says:

          Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one other than in the movies!

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