life before apps

If you're 25, there's a pretty good chance you don't remember a world without apps.

I do.

And sometimes I wonder what it must sound like when someone my age says that.

So let me take you back.

Not that far, really.

But far enough that the internet was something you went to rather than something you carried around in your pocket.

before the smartphone

When I was younger, there was no Google Maps guiding you down the street.

No Uber.

No Airbnb.

No Instagram.

No Facebook.

No WhatsApp.

No TikTok.

No little glowing rectangle telling you where to eat, where to sleep, who was nearby, what happened five minutes ago or what someone on the other side of the planet thinks about it.

Computers existed, of course.

And software existed.

But an application meant something very different.

Word was an application.

Photoshop was an application.

Dreamweaver was an application.

You installed software on your computer. You bought it, borrowed it, copied it — and yes, software piracy became a very real problem.

The internet itself was still becoming a thing.

And then everything started changing.

remember internet cafés?

In British Columbia, we gradually went from dial-up connections and computers that seemed enormous to faster internet, websites, email and eventually wireless connections.

But in Mexico, I watched something particularly interesting happen.

Internet cafés spread everywhere.

You could walk into a little shop, sit down at a computer and pay for internet time.

For people who didn't own a computer, didn't have internet at home or didn't have the latest technology, those places were a doorway into another world.

And Mexico caught up incredibly fast.

I remember people in Zipolite having basic cell phones while the rest of the world was racing toward smartphones.

Many businesses had little or no web presence.

A hotel might have a phone number.

A restaurant might have a sign.

Someone might tell you, "Go down the road, turn left and ask for Miguel."

That was the search engine.

People were the search engine.

and then came Facebook

Facebook was still something people were figuring out.

Seriously.

People barely understood Facebook.

There weren't necessarily polished business pages, social-media managers, influencers and carefully constructed online identities.

There were people.

Friends.

Photos.

Messages.

And eventually businesses started realizing:

Wait... people can actually find us here.

That changed everything.

I was there when apps were still a question

In 2014, I learned app design.

And this is the part I really want a 25-year-old to understand.

We didn't know.

We didn't know exactly what this was going to become.

We knew smartphones were growing.

We knew people were getting connected.

We knew there was enormous potential.

But the app ecosystem we now take for granted wasn't simply sitting there waiting for us.

We were figuring it out.

I actually created an app.

And I put a tremendous amount of work into it.

Other people put tremendous amounts of work into it too.

But eventually I discovered a problem:

it could be hacked.

So I didn't release it.

That decision still stays with me.

Because sometimes an idea can be good.

The people working on it can be good.

The intention can be good.

And yet the technology isn't ready — or you aren't comfortable putting something into the world that could be exploited.

So the app stayed on the shelf.

but the idea behind it mattered

The app was connected to something I cared deeply about: Mexico, especially Zipolite.

Hotels and restaurants were willing to provide information.

The idea was to create something useful for visitors while also creating possibilities for fundraising.

For me.

For dogs.

For people in Zipolite.

For the community.

It wasn't simply:

"Let's make an app."

It was:

"What if this technology could actually help people?"

That was the excitement.

We were still imagining what the internet could become.

then Mexico got connected

One of the most amazing things to watch was how quickly technology spread.

A person who might once have relied on an internet café eventually had a smartphone.

A tiny business that once depended entirely on word-of-mouth could suddenly have a Facebook page.

Someone could send photographs instantly.

Someone could message family on another continent.

A hotel could reach travelers without having a giant advertising budget.

A person in a little Mexican village could suddenly participate in the same digital world as someone in Vancouver.

That was extraordinary.

And honestly?

It still is.

but somewhere along the way...

We didn't just connect people.

We connected everything.

The little computer in our pocket became our bank.

Our camera.

Our map.

Our newspaper.

Our television.

Our telephone.

Our address book.

Our calendar.

Our shopping mall.

Our dating service.

Our entertainment centre.

Our workplace.

Our advertising billboard.

Our photo album.

Our diary.

Our passport into an increasingly digital world.

And now artificial intelligence is sitting right beside all of it.

We went from:

"Wouldn't it be amazing if we could do this?"

to:

"Why doesn't this app already do that?"

in what feels like the blink of an eye.

Alice fell down the rabbit hole

Sometimes I think about that little moment in 2014.

We were experimenting.

We were excited.

We were building.

We thought technology was going to move us forward.

And it did.

But perhaps we didn't spend enough time asking:

Forward toward what?

Technology solved enormous problems.

It also created enormous ones.

Privacy became complicated.

Scams became sophisticated.

Algorithms learned what keeps us looking.

Businesses learned how much data is worth.

People became reachable at every hour of the day.

And somewhere along the way, being connected started becoming very different from actually being connected.

That's the part I worry about.

Not technology itself.

Technology is just a tool.

It's what we do with it.

so, if you're 25...

You were born into a world where apps were already becoming normal.

You probably don't remember paying for internet by the hour at an internet café.

You probably don't remember waiting for a website to load.

You probably don't remember taking photographs and having to wait to see whether they turned out.

You probably don't remember looking something up in an encyclopedia.

You probably don't remember having a phone that couldn't take a photograph.

And you certainly probably don't remember when application meant something you installed on a computer rather than something you tapped with your thumb.

I remember.

I remember the excitement.

I remember believing the internet might help ordinary people reach one another.

I remember watching Mexico connect.

I remember trying to build something myself.

And I remember walking away from my own app because I couldn't make it safe enough.

Maybe that's an important lesson from the early internet.

Just because we can build something doesn't necessarily mean we should release it.

Perhaps the next generation needs to rediscover that question.

Because we haven't reached the end of the technological revolution.

We're still falling down the rabbit hole.

And maybe it's time to occasionally stop, look around and ask:

Where exactly are we going?

What are we gaining?

What are we losing?

And can we still find our way home?

#lifeBeforeApps #internetHistory #technology #digitalLife #Mexico #BritishColumbia #Zipolite #socialMedia #apps #generations