I lived in the years B.C.

Yes, that’s right — I have lived most of my life — the first 43 years of it, in fact — in the time B.C. — that’s Before Computers.

Back then, information at one’s fingertips meant trudging to the library, where the books were listed using the Dewey Decimal System. Biographies? “Last row, in the back, make a left, top three shelves,” said the librarian. She was the one who told us where to find what we wanted. She was our “Google,” our “Bing.”

At home we had volumes of encyclopedias, A-Z, to help us with our homework. Rain forests, rabbit habitats, the Revolutionary War? Just pick up “R.” Need a good meatball recipe? Phone the neighbors, or ask Aunt Alice. This was before digital photography, too, when we would take a roll of 24 (36 if we could afford it) and send it away in the pre-addressed envelope — “FREE DOUBLE PRINTS!” — then wait a week for the pictures to come in the mail. How exciting! The closest thing we had to instant photographic gratification were Polaroids, or photo booths that would pop out strips of four black and whites in about three minutes. I now have 10,000 photographs on my computer, many of them not so exciting (or flattering).

If we wanted to know the words to a song, we would call everyone we knew, and, oftentimes, they would know the same wrong words as everyone else. Or we would go buy the record and play it on slow speed. Lyrics.com? Not then.
Am I waxing nostalgic? No, not really. I love having information within seconds. I love that I can find many, many sources for the cause of my headaches (fatal tumor, rare exotic disease, long-dormant super virus coming to the surface.) I love to keep in touch through e-mail, and share pictures of my grandsons’ milestones — just minutes after it happens —with relatives in another part of the country. I love that I can book a flight, post a message, find a florist 1,000 miles away. As a journalist, I can pull up information immediately, and verify it just almost as quickly. And after all, I did rediscover my long-lost love through the Internet.

Although some people my age adamantly refuse to learn about Cyberspace. A friend of mine always says, “I can’t get used to all this ‘dot com’ stuff.” I’m lucky because I can appreciate all this ‘dot com’ stuff, having lived B.C., and I realize that some of the older generation will never really understand what a handy tool it can be. On the other hand, young people today are so used to IMing, texting, Googling and Web surfing that they can’t appreciate how easy it is to get all that information — and that it’s not always accurate.

Just as our parents and grandparents are saying, “I just can’t follow that Internet stuff...” I am just as fearful that one day, future generations may say, “What’s a library?