You of the younger generation may not want to believe me, but it\’s true. I have lived a significant part of my life, more than half of it, without the internet. Not once in the first thirty years of my life did I peek at a single website, send a single email, write a single comment on anything online, watch a single video, play a single online game, or download anything. I mean, I\’ve downloaded a few things, like pants, but that\’s not part of the internet.

You couldn\’t go that long without the Internet? I\’ll give you that much credit. I wouldn\’t have lasted that long without it either. And the fact that I\’ve been \’abstinent\’ for so long stems from one reason only. There was no internet back then. And if we don\’t have something, we can\’t use it.

Sure, my pre-internet life wasn\’t perfect, and there were quite a few complications, but it was livable. Because if you want to or have to, you can handle anything. For example? Anyone can open a news site today and find out what\’s going on. And me before the Internet? I just read newspapers, magazines or books and made do. Anyone can open a search engine on the internet and find out quickly and easily what\’s going where. Whereas back then I just went to the train station and found it in the paper timetables. And for the more distant services, he\’d check at the window, where a staff member would look it up for people in the timetable book.

When I wanted to write a letter to someone, I didn\’t send an e-mail like I do today, in the age of the Internet. I took a piece of paper, wrote my message, sealed it in an envelope, franked it and dropped it in the mailbox or took it to the post office. And as for the more titillating fun? That was worse. But for the last few pre-internet years, this was available in the form of magazines or videotapes. And before that it was banned because \’pornography\’ bolder than Neprakta\’s pictures didn\’t belong in a socialist society.

So obviously one could and does live without the internet. But it\’s just not the same.