29 Mar 09 What was it like?

Tags: global village

So here I am, writing a blog on this wonderful Sunday afternoon. I’m now 19. Being a gen-y’er, I grew up with all the new technologies during my school years. I remember when everyone got cellphones when we were 13. Back then, everyone had the same cellphone, the infamous nokia 3310.

When I was 14 I “discovered” the web, but it was before social networks as we know it. When I saw MySpace for the first time, I wondered what was the point? “Why would someone get a random ’space’ that you can’t really make your own? not like a website. pfff. lame.” All I used the internet for was playing warcraft online and browsing forums. We were still on dial-up, so me and my brother eagerly waited for 7pm on a Friday afternoon. It was in those afternoons where we did crazy things like record improv for 3 hours.

And then Facebook came along that totally changed everything. It was the first site which everyone adopted around me, not just your internet savvy people.

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I grew up with all these things. They are now an integral part of being someone in the 21st century. I watched Dazed and Confused and Fast Time at Ridgemont High this past week. They are both incredible teen movies. They are both set in times before cellphones and the internet. It wasn’t 100 years ago, but a few decades. The world has changed so much.

I just can’t imagine what it must like living as teenager in those times. It must’ve been so “local”! If people went away, there wasn’t a way to get a hold of them if you didn’t know where they were going. In those days, moving to the neighbouring city was further away compared to me moving to China in this age. You were so disconnected.

I just can’t fathom what it must’ve been like.