what would you do if the internet was GONE?

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Live in 1965? I'd never survive. That was the year before the original Star Trek came out, and twenty-eight years before Voyager! I'd go crazy without the internet; to have to hunt down information on foot, to libraries to look at dusty old textbooks? That was what they called research when I was in elementary school in the early 2000's, and I hated it. You can absolutely bet I'd have dropped out of college if I had to write all those academic research papers by looking for research articles one at a time in paper journals! No knowledge of the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum would also mean I'd still be an undiagnosed weirdo with no idea why I could never fit in anywhere, and couldn't keep a job. Given that my best friend is a dark skinned American-adopted Nepalese, I'd probably be spending a lot of my time on the front lines of various civil rights protest marches as well.

Then I'd scream, and curl up, and die. Maybe.

...I have , essentially , NEVER had a " personal computing device " ~ I've had smaertphones - Um , they aren't pcds , anyway , are they ? - and , I've briefly had laptops/tablets - They break/get stolen - I've spent all these years utterly on the outside , outside the walls/fortress of the city , of the computer world - Including all my years on WP - and now my body is eating itself away and the wouldbe " authorities " are doing nothing .

Id be upset about not having that technology but I'd use the extra time to trying to figure out how to get back to my original time & I'd eventually adjust to not having internet thou I'd still miss it.

I'd spend a lot more time reading and watching TV. I'd spend more time listening to my music - in the form of vinyl. I'd go to work each day. I'd dress like The Kinks, go to night clubs and walk around town shocking traditional thinking cis-gendered people. I'd also volunteer some of my time loom knitting children's balls to donate to the local food bank.

I used to enjoy looking things up that way. It was fun to use card catalogs. Sometimes it took a long time to find what I was looking for, but I probably read things more thoroughly and retained a lot more information that way. It was like a treasure hunt.

The internet has spoiled me. Now that I'm used to being able to pull information up in seconds I don't absorb information so deeply. It doesn't take long before I go skipping along to the next thing. I feel impatient if I can't get answers immediately. lol

Libraries, not Internet searching.

Vinyl, not iTunes.

Reading books, not YouTube.com.

Real life, not virtual.

Dressing up to go to "the movies," not trying to choose which Red Box to use.

Making coffee, not "ordering" one.

Admiring the race to the Moon, not people from New Jersey.

Reading magazines, not blogs.

Wearing classy clothes, not T-shirts and sweatpants.

Cooking food, not pressing a microwave START button.

Watching the "Viet Nam" (not Vietnam) War unfold and realizing that Eisenhower was correct.

Worrying about global cooling, not global warming (or even the next threat: global tepidness).

Playing board games, not video games.

Watching free television through the air, not paying some billionaires to deliver it to me.

Drinking all the free fluoride-less water I want, not paying some billionaires to deliver it to me.

Actually talking with friends, not texting them when they are in the same room with me.

And, so on.

I'd hail the first passing UFO and have them take me off of this rock. Maybe they'd have something better than the internet.

Sign me up for that one. Anal probes for two please!

Read a book or draw, get photos out of books.

I used to take books to the copying machine to get photos also way back in the 70s and 80s and early 90s.

You know, I would dearly love to wake up in 1965... I come from 1972 anyway so it'd just be like growing up. I think, if I managed to develop a temporal transporter, I'd actually head back to 1931 and live through all the momentous events of the late 20th. The internet is a handy tool, and a Godsend for those of us less able socially, but its come at a cost. I remember when people used to take an active interest in other people's lives and obtaining information required some effort. Ask me, its made us lazy as a species.

I would certainly be having more sex.

what was the status of birth control in your country in 1965?

Coitus interruptus? Idk. I can remember my mother taking round, pink pills from an amber bottle which she said stopped her having babies. That was way after 1965 though.

I know that 1968 was when England legalized birth control pills, I don't know when that extended to the rest of the commonwealth. I know there were diaphragms before then, but I don't know where they were legal. I don't know when IUDs came into use either. all this said, I can say for a fact that making whoopee back in those days was a dicier proposition in general, if one wanted to avoid pregnancy.