(no subject)

[moominmolly]

Gosh, how on earth did people waste time at work before the internet?

Comments

[palmir.livejournal.com]

They threw paper into trash cans (http://www.widro.com/throwpaper.html).

[fraterrisus]

best. flash game. evar.

also, i hate you.

[palmir.livejournal.com]

It's more efficient than doing it for real, and it clicks as if you're working!

[tobi.livejournal.com]

Before the Internet I would BBS and before BBSing I wrote books. I have not written a single story or book since I got the Internet. /me is lame. =p

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

careful studies of ancient lore suggest the existence of "water coolers", which were apparently some sort of social networking facility. best interpretation of the surviving literature suggests they were low bandwidth, synchronous communication devices, tho paradoxically they appear to have supported only voice protocols. doubtless, further research into the area will clarify this puzzle.

[spike.livejournal.com]

Watercoolers were basically systems for multiple users to perform ad-hoc synchronization of their own personal knowledge-bases. Basically, you can think of them as Lotus Notes Servers.

[szasz.livejournal.com]

Well, there was BITNET. Before that I think I just read Unix man pages.

[spike.livejournal.com]

And before man pages, there were just stacks and stacks and stacks of 14 ⁷/₈" x 11" green bar paper stretching all the way back to the origin of the universe.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I used to tear pages out of magazines and catalogues and enhance them with glitter.

[cutieperson]

used to? that's *still* fun!

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I haven't done it in years!

[concrete.livejournal.com]

minesweeper/solitaire/freecell. I know people in government positions that have been doing it for a decade.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

I pretty much just did my job. Though I have dim memories of a complicated time-waster that involved my legal secretaries' dictionary.

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

Don't you remember movies from the 80's where sectretaries spend all day on the phone while doing their nails? It wasn't until the 90's that they got into the kinky sex with their lawyer bosses.

I had a job with no Internet once...

[moonshadow.livejournal.com]

I wrote poems. I wrote grocery lists. I wrote lists that I don't even want to talk about. I took frequent bathroom breaks and read a book on the way to and from.

Re: I had a job with no Internet once...

[cutieperson]

hey, i remember that job! my time waster there was thinking about which person from the office i would go home with that night! er, hm. perhaps that was not the best time waster.

[inthatoneway.livejournal.com]

The last job I had before the internets was working in a comic book store, so keeping myself amused was not a big issue.

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

So to speak.

[youngwilliam.livejournal.com]

I know that my father once showed me an inter-office memo from the Department of the Interior (where he worked) that described how to fold origami bunny-heads.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

You're right! they faxed each other jokes and sent bogus memos.

[cloeigrrl.livejournal.com]

the water cooler?

heh it's a good enough guess as any :)