What if the Pandemic Happened Twenty Years Ago?
Today, our digital devices make staying at home easier. Was the same true in the year 2000?
As people are adjusting to stay-at-home life during the coronavirus pandemic, they are relying heavily on digital strategies to cope. Internet use has dramatically increased over the past several weeks as we use Zoom, Netflix, YouTube, and social media to work at home, stay in touch with friends, relieve the boredom of isolation, and even exercise.
But what if the pandemic had happened 20 years ago, in the year 2000? Many activities we’re taking for granted now would not be possible, but surprisingly, you’d still have many electronic options at your disposal.
How was digital life back then? Let’s take a look.
Computers and Internet
Chances are only about 50–50 that you’d have a personal computer at home and even less that you’d have an internet connection. Only 47% of households had internet access, and most of that was dial-up access through landlines. The digital divide was significant. Lower-income people, minority families, and rural residents were less likely to have the means to go online.[1]
AOL was probably your primary internet connection, though if you were white, middle class or above, urban, or technologically-inclined, you might have been one of the early users of broadband. You used AOL mainly for email, news, and entertainment. If you were brave enough to connect with strangers, you could use join an asynchronous forum or scheduled chat. Instant messaging was also popular, but you could only connect to other AOL users.
Outside AOL, you could spend your time browsing many websites. Yahoo was a popular search engine, though Google was starting to gain popularity. Most websites consisted of text and photos. YouTube didn’t come on the scene until 2005. Amazon existed, but you could only order books and CDs.
You could not have ordered food delivery from Instacart or a to-go order from your favorite restaurant. You’d have to make a phone call.
Mobile Phones
If you had a cell phone, you couldn’t do much with it besides make phone calls. The Nokia 3210 was one of the most advanced phones you could buy in early 2000. You could customize ring tones and send short texts. It also had three games installed on its one-and-a-half-inch, black on gray display screen. Mobile phones that could access the internet, such as the BlackBerry, would not become available for a few more years.
Television and Music
In the year 2000, you could have spent your time in isolation watching TV 24/7, and you could choose from dozens of channels on TV, including premium networks like HBO and Showtime, available through your cable subscription.
You also probably had a DVD player (and if you were behind the times, a VHS player). You most likely had a subscription to your neighborhood Blockbuster store, though it’s hard to say whether DVD rental would have been considered an essential service. Netflix did exist in 2000, but you could only order DVDs through the mail from them. Streaming services didn’t come until several years later.
You would have had a CD collection, and you might have made mix tapes by burning CDs on your personal computer, or if old-school, recording them on cassette tape. You probably had a Walkman or Discman (the CD version) for private listening. MP3 format existed, but the iPod wasn’t released until 2001.
Some people were trading songs using peer-to-peer file sharing on sites like Napster, though lawsuits had already been filed.
Working at Home
Could you have worked at home in 2000? Just like today, it depends on what kind of job you have. Many office jobs easily make the transition from corporate office to home office, as long as phone lines and internet are available. In 1999, the number of people working from home at least once per month numbered more than 19 million. They called it telecommuting.
But your home office would have looked much different than it does today. You certainly wouldn’t have been kicked back in your recliner with a MacBook Pro on your lap (like I am, as I write this). You probably would have had a desktop computer with a CRT monitor, an ergonomic keyboard, a scanner, a printer, and a fax. If you had to meet with colleagues, it would have been through a conference call on a landline.
Online Learning
Surprisingly, online education wasn’t an unknown concept in 2000. In fact, one of the first uses of the internet was computer-assisted learning. The PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was developed in 1960 at the University of Illinois. It allowed students to connect remotely from several other universities to complete educational activities, chat, play games, and other activities.
In 2000, you could have taken online classes from a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Phoenix. Blackboard existed in its early versions, but it’s doubtful that your university, not to mention elementary or high school, could have adapted to online learning in a couple of weeks, as most are doing now. It’s hard to say how kids could have kept up with their school work during months of stay-at-home orders.
At a Glance
2020 vs. 2000
If you had been quarantined in the year 2000, you’d have plenty of electronic options to keep you busy, but you’d also been missing out on some of your favorites, such as YouTube, Instagram, and Netflix. Working at home would have been feasible, but it would have been very difficult to continue educational instruction at any grade level.
Many people have speculated whether life will go back normal after the threat of the coronavirus fades. That’s a multifacted question involving political, social, and economic considerations. But in terms of technology, it’s likely we may be even more dependent on our electronic devices to live our daily lives.
[1] United States Census Bureau. “Home Computers and Internet Use in the United States: August 2000.” September 2001. https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf
