Pre-internet Life: Experience and The Importance of Relationship in the Internet Age
On Life before the Internet - Guest Post #2
Hello! Exciting Announcements for The Book of Ptah!
I am introducing a new section where YOU can become a part of this Substack. I’ll be featuring guest posts that align with the spirit of this space.
The first guest post was by
- if you haven’t read it, you can read it here. The second guest post is by and there are more to come.Much like the endless toil of Sisyphus, forever pushing the boulder up the hill only to see it roll back down, our experiences with the rise of technology and the internet mirror a similar journey. The pre-internet era felt like a time of simplicity, an uphill climb grounded in tangible connections, physical books, and face-to-face conversations. Each generation had its own unique struggle and its own moments of fleeting accomplishment, much like Sisyphus with his stone.
As I invite you to contribute to Sisyphus’ Journey, sharing stories from before the internet and your early digital days, there’s an opportunity to reflect on the ways this "boulder" of technology has reshaped our lives. Did it open new vistas, or did it feel like a relentless cycle of scrolling and searching, always seeking meaning, only to have it slip away again?
Your contributions will be personal, rooted in your own experiences—offering wisdom to my generation. In a way, we are all on this Sisyphus’ journey, facing an ever-evolving landscape of innovation and loss, progress and nostalgia, continually pushing forward while looking back at what once was.
Maybe we end up learning something from each other.
Here’s some background on Mark -
Mark grew up in a very small farming town in America. The movie Gandhi came out when he was in college. His experience and knowledge of India was pretty much limited to that movie. Then early in his career he developed panic attacks. Growing up Christian, his experience with deep prayer and meditation was limited. And so it was that he turned to India to learn breathing techniques to calm myself down. He read a book about Gandhi and to this day he admires India. He is an Orthodox Christian and he became Orthodox Christian in part because he did not know about the deep inward prayer tradition within his own faith. His priest was from India. His grandmother marched with Gandhi for India’s independence. She was jailed for her actions; but viewed the cause of freedom as more important than their life where her husband was a British magistrate.
Mark will soon be retiring after forty-five years of working in computerized accounting.
Pre-internet Life
- by Mark Robinson
One evening after supper, my family settled down together in the family room. One of my daughters quickly wrote the below poem as a protest. Her poem was protesting each of us being on our phones texting or surfing the internet when she wanted to talk.
I speak to muted ears,
That lost their ability to hear!
I utter words met with silence.
I question my need, my reliance,
For others to simply hear me out.
I am ignored even if I shout!
Blank faces stare at electronic devices!
Mindlessly “Zoned Out” my advice is,
Tear down the walls creating hypnotic focus!
Where personal conversations seem hopeless!
These glowing screens make me think,
I have better discussions with the kitchen sink.
Her little poem perfectly captures modern society. Family and friends, those that mean the most to us, may be directly in our presence. And yet, many times, we are more focused on what is happening virtually on our phones and computers. One only needs to observe what happens in restaurants, work lunchrooms, coffee shops, and stores to see how divided our attention has become. People can be observed walking down sidewalks and across busy streets looking at their phones. They are distracted and only partially aware of others and their surroundings. Even more dangerous and concerning, people can be seen driving while talking or texting on their phones.
I was born late in my parents’ life, and I grew up in a very small farming town in America. My only sister was much older than me. So, the values I was taught were always a little out of sync and behind the times of my peers. I only knew one grandparent, my grandmother on my father’s side. She was born in 1880 in Texas in a pioneer town on the Chisholm Trail. Cowboys used the Chisholm trail to drive cattle to the market. Even in the 1960’s Grandma still lived much as she had been taught while growing up. She warmed her house with a cookstove fueled with wood and sometimes coal. On this wood cookstove, she made homemade pies, cakes, cookies, biscuits, and many other things, including homemade donuts. Grandma had nine children, and her house was very crowded when all the aunts and uncles and cousins congregated for the holidays. She cooked wonderful family meals for us. We had fresh chicken and fresh eggs. Vegetables were mostly from gardens. Providing for the family, she even made her own soap, sewed clothing, knitted, crocheted, and tatted. This was my exposure to American pioneer life pre-internet.
I learned about Grandma’s pioneer ways by working alongside her and observing. I fondly remember her hands reaching into a hot oven to test the temperature. By experiencing and feeling the oven’s heat, she knew when the oven was just right for baking pies or her famous biscuits. My father, grandma’s son, only finished the sixth grade. What my father lacked in formal education, he more than made up for in wisdom. He too taught me in the pioneer way by having me work alongside him and observing. He wanted me to finish high school and attend college. But more important than sheer book learning, the memories of my father teaching me by example are what mean the most to me. He taught me how to repair machinery and cars, do home repairs, garden, and he also taught me how to think and reason and solve problems on my own. He also taught me, through his living example, the importance of patience, honesty and integrity.
The values and knowledge my family passed onto me were transmitted in the pioneer way. The pioneer way of teaching emphasizes the importance of relationships. From Ancient India we have received the teachings of the Upanishads. I am told the word Upanishad means to sit near or sit down besides. This recalls a time when students sat near their teacher to receive the transmission of knowledge and wisdom from teacher to pupil. The pioneer way of teaching, whether on the American Frontier or from the forests of Ancient India, emphasizes personal relationship and gaining wisdom rather than just intellectual factual knowledge. A wise man once told me that the spiritual life is caught, not taught. That is the way I learned from both of my parents and my grandmother. Their simple ways of living were transmitted without force, but through osmosis.
When I left the small farming village for college, my father, with his limited education, warned me not to become an educated fool. He recognized he had a limited education; but he also wanted to remind me of my roots and that there is a wisdom from within that means more than mere book learning. He wanted me to remember the importance of people irrespective of their education level or their socioeconomic status. He emphasized working hard; but not to be overly concerned with the result if I was honestly doing my best and fulfilling my duty.
In college I studied accounting, and I will soon be retiring after forty-five years of working in computerized accounting. I have seen many changes in technology during my career. Nothing really prepared me for the ever-increasing speed of technological change and the rapid increase in the speed of communications. What was communication like for me pre-internet?
As a boy I wrote letters with pen and paper. I manually completed an order form to purchase items from a paper catalog. Letters and orders were all mailed through the post office. I had to wait days and/or weeks to receive replies to my letters and to receive packages for my orders. The long wait for an item I really wanted or a letter I wanted to receive was filled with anticipation. This waiting taught me the difference between instant gratification and patience. Compared to today, not many things we did happened instantly. I rode my bicycle to the town post office every day to check the mail. What an exciting day it was when I received mail! This was a big event! Sixty years later post-internet, we can order items on Amazon and receive them the very next day, and sometimes the same day.
If you would like helping out this pen pal (me), then you can do so by ‘buying me a coffee’!!
A wonderful aspect of the internet has been the ability to interact with people around the globe. This has enhanced learning about other cultures. Pre-internet, such knowledge for the common man was only available from libraries. If a person desired to communicate with someone in another country, an advertisement could be placed in the classified section of a club publication, school magazine, or newspaper. The advertisement would say something like, “Boy, 12, desires to communicate and become a “Pen Pal” with boy of same age living in Japan. Please send letter to the following address….” A letter was written, usually by hand, and mailed. It could take many weeks of patience and excitement to make contact and begin communicating regularly with a pen pal.
I asked a co-worker if she ever had a pen pal. She smiled fondly at her memory. The co-worker lived in Germany had a pen pal she communicated with in the United States in the 1970’s and 1980’s. She met the pen pal once in London as a young adult. But the memory she thought most fondly of was a pen pal/sponsorship of a young boy in Kenya. Years later, she met this boy the family had helped. The boy was grown-up and had become a doctor. When she and her family finally met this young doctor, he went into a back room and brought out all the letters she sent him over the years. It brought lots of joy.
In my youth, letters were very special. Even postcards from family and friends on their trips brought joy. But a complete letter written from the hand of the sender meant the person took the time to communicate. It meant that you meant something to each other; or that the matter communicated was important. I have letters from family members long passed away. To read one of these letters, especially from my mother, brings back endearing thoughts. I wonder if we are losing something important without physical letters. I wonder if we are not only losing physical links to nostalgic memories; but we are also losing historical connections to the past.
Before the internet, when I started my career, most important letters were primarily sent through the post. This was how most of the business was conducted. It was expensive and it took time to communicate this way. Was the letter necessary? Or would a phone call suffice? The result was most mail received and sent was important. The sheer cost and time to produce a letter meant the sender really screened between the important and non-essential. Sure, there was a lot of junk mail advertising received. But that was easy to dispose of. And since the mail arrived at nearly the same time every day, one could plan their workday around the event and then prioritize the work.
Since the invention of the internet, email, and texting, planning one’s day in the business world has become much more difficult. I like to say that “Communication became cheap (meaning inexpensive); so, we have cheap communication (meaning of little worth because achieved with little thought and effort). Every email, text, posting, targeted advertising, or Facebook messenger, all of it grabs and clamours for our attention. It has become a real distraction for me. Perhaps others can control this distraction. I cannot, at least at present. The worst aspect of this is the impact on one’s spiritual life.
The internet uses what I would call “push-technologies”. Inexpensive communication means we now have no barrier to prevent excessive communication. My email inboxes constantly receive email at every hour of the day. There are technologies that can now screen emails; but my experience has been that most people miss important emails. The sheer volume of email boggles my mind and my several in-boxes can go beyond what I can control without constant attention. Social media companies seem to know this and they have spent a lot of money analyzing the psychology of humans. They know how to grab our attention and then keep our attention. They know how to manipulate us. And then they push ever more information at us to keep us connected 24/7. I have a lust to know about current events. When I was a boy, we had the morning news and the evening news. These were half-hour programs. By the time I was in college in 1980, CNN debuted as the first twenty-four hour/seven day a week news broadcast. Modern society fills this lust to know with more than enough news channels to keep people with my problem totally engaged. This news attention grabbing was much less prevalent with daily morning newspapers!
I started my career interested in computerized accounting systems. It was easy to be interested in computers and the changes that came with the introduction of the internet. Technology brought challenges to my life and to everyone else too. I mentioned the impact uncontrolled technological change has had on my spiritual life. Frankly, I have not found the proper balance between the demands of my job, the constant change and introductions of new technologies, and my responsibilities to my family. There have been times when I have exhausted myself. Early in my career, the difference between the slow village life I grew up with and the world of accounting in the big city caused me much anxiety. I learned prayer and meditation greatly helped me regain control. In this pre-internet time, before the birth of my first daughter, I went on a pilgrimage to meet a retired professor of English literature. This professor was born into a matrilineal family, in a small village in Kerala, India. He spent time in the Blue Mountains. Born into the slow pace of Indian village life, he contrasted that life to the fast pace of modern American life where he had moved. He wrote the following in 1984.
“I am never critical of science. But I am often critical of the uses to which science is put… Science, and particularly technology, makes a good servant but a most obnoxious master. But science can be put in its place. We want to arrive at that delicate balance where science will not deprive us of our humanity but will serve us with humaneness: where it will help us solve our problems rather than create new ones. This is a difficult balance to achieve, because technological progress is heady stuff. We can get swept away with it and lose our personal relationships, our sense of the unity of life, without being aware that we are losing anything at all.”
The above quote perfectly summarizes the struggles I have had with technology. When I close my eyes, I can picture the much simpler time in my small farming village where life was slower, and time seemed to stand still. It was a time where people spent read actual books with intense focus; children played sports and invented their own games. We climbed trees and pretended we were secret agents or Robin Hood. We rode bicycles, rode horses, walked on the rails of the railroad tracks, and went fishing. I enjoyed running and I would go on long lonely runs in the morning to watch the sun rise in the east. Old people would get together for dinner and neighbors would stop by for conversations on the front porch. Life, in this pre-internet time, was indeed slower and nearly all these activities emphasized relationships. It has been said that what gets your attention gets you! So, let us value the higher calling of relationships and use technology to build stronger relationships rather than it being a distraction and diversion from the truly important things in life, including our spiritual lives.
If you have reached this far then I hope it means you like what I’m doing and if so you might consider supporting me by ‘buying me a coffee’ -which is a one off payment rather than a continuous subscription. (Substack does not let me monetize my articles because I am based in India)
Payments, however small, encourage me in my writing and mean that I can spend more time honing my skills.
You can buy my book which is a memoir about my 1800 km walk through India through my website. Thankyou, really!
There is one more thing by the way.
Most of you joined this Substack after reading stories from Saving a Village. In that series, I spoke about the urgency of taking action against the looming threats of deforestation, coastal highway projects, and the chemical and oil factories set to rise in this eco-sensitive zone. These developments could devastate many villages, including mine. That’s why I’ve decided to embark on a 500-kilometer journey across this stretch of land.
My purpose isn’t political, nor am I here to point fingers at specific companies or factories. Instead, I want to visit each village, sharing the message that while change is inevitable, it’s vital that we steer it in the right direction. I have no desire to cast myself as a hero; my goal is simply to witness this land and its fading culture before it's too late. However, if I can raise awareness and ignite even a small spark of understanding, I’ll be content knowing I did what I could.
But I can't do this alone. To plan the walk and cover necessary supplies, I need your support. Unfortunately, platforms like Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites aren't available to me here in India, so I’m relying on your donations. You can contribute through PayPal—here’s the link. For donations over $30, I’d love to send you a personalized postcard as a token of gratitude.
I’ll delve deeper into this journey in the upcoming newsletters. Thank you for your support!
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'what gets your attention gets you!' There is another saying' 'where attention goes, energy flows'.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this post.
"Science, and particularly technology, makes a good servant but a most obnoxious master" - absolutely - this is a great post.