B.C. - Before Communications

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There was a time, not too long ago, when people did not have access to or use the communication technology that we today could not (seemingly) possibly live without. Before the breakthrough of the World Wide Web, mobile telephony, SMS, instant messaging, email, digital cameras, Ipods, DVD, or what have you…That was the case for the class of 1996/1997 in Malaga, Spain.

Using the Internet basically meant calling the main campus - obviously in Spanish - to make a reservation to use a computer with a insanely slow dial-up connection. Useful for finding information, useless for communicating - nobody had an email address anyway…

Few people owned mobile telephones. Making phone calls to the homeland was indeed possible, but the roaming charges were astronomical….Even fewer people owned landphones, and those who did were restricted to incoming calls. Apparently Spanish landlords did not have the greatest of trust in young foreign students…

World news, one might wonder? Swedish or international newspapers in Torremolinos or Fuengirola, 10 and 30 kilometers away respectively. Spanish newspapers, good reading practice, but time consuming. Television, indeed. Mainly soccer, incomprehensible gameshows, movies dubbed into Spanish. BBC, CNN, Eurosport, Euronews - yeah, right…

So how did people communicate then, not being able to make a snapshot on their Nokia and sending it instantly around the world, or not being able to log on to MSN Messenger to chat with friends or family, or just pop into an Internet café that you can find today in the most remote of locations?

Letters or postcards - Yup, writing manually can actually be fun, and postal service did in fact deliver.
Using payphones and prepaid phonecards - Today considered ancient behavior, at the time the standard mean of communicating with the family and friends at home.
Personal visit - Hey now! What’s that? For those who were raised in the digital age - the act of putting on shoes, and manually walking/biking/driving/rollerblading from your own home to the home of someone you know, knock on the door, and show up unannounced. In the western world of today considered odd behavior, back then sometimes the only option of getting together.

When this is written, that was the reality for the international student crowd in Malaga only 10 years ago. Stone age/strange/inconvenient/complicated? Maybe. But the most memorable time of my life. Totally cut off (oh, well…) from the outside world, depending on your friends on site, and actually getting to know people in 3-D. Fantastic. Has the world become better with in this digital era? Think I’ll leave that discussion for philosophers and scientists. All I know is that I had the time of my life. Remains to be seen where we stand another 10 years from now.

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