Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for May 05, 2015

Don’t worry, Calvin; eventually your father will have no choice.

For us elder generation computering is not to go without saying and not so easy, we are not so used in it and I can understand Dad, it’s hard for me too!

I think Mom’s still working on getting a VCR.

Before the Internet we had “on-line services” like Compuserve and Genie, all on dial-up. I may be the only one left on Earth who remembers that.

Then again, with on-line services you would start browsing the internet, come across sites like this one and find out you’re actually a cartoon. That would be quite a shock.

anyone for a friendly game of pong?

I’m totally with Dad, said the guy who routinely comments on the GoComics web site.

after having “modern technology”…i’m going to side with Calvin’s dad on this one…i’d rather not have any of it.it’s made us all TOO accessible and vulnerable.

In the last panel, Calvin is making a long-distance call, the way it was done before telephones were invented.

To view the following strips in the archive and help GoComics generate revenue, please click on the blue archive links below. To view the strips directly, click on the images below or stretch them.At least Calvin’s dad has the comfort of knowing that his home phone is still a land line with a dial on it:Calvin and Hobbes (December 15, 1986)But Calvin’s dad has a point. There are some risks with having access to the Internet:Pearls Before Swine (June 11, 2014)Pearls Before Swine (March 8, 2013)Ziggy (January 6, 2010)

the Singularity is coming…

Actually, that’s the reaction you’ll see EVERYWHERE if the system crashes nationwide.

I remember dial up. And I remember being kicked off-line more times than I can remember.

“It’s bad enough we have a telephone.”I suppose Calvin’s father is justifiably afraid of what trouble Calvin will cause if given the chance. But combined with his inexplicable disdain for the entire medium of television, I’m with Calvin in thinking there’s something wrong with his father’s apparent preference for willful ignorance of the rest of the world.

Sorry Calvin but the universe is not listening.

This is from 1995- the final year that new Calvin strips appeared. So everything that’s happened in technology since that year is unknown to Calvin. Maybe things are changing just a tad fast.

@Thomas Scott Roberts: Yes, Calvin lives at the time when some still referred to the Internet as the Information Superhighway. We have all benefited greatly from that Superhighway in the ensuing years, but as speeds have increased, so have accidents. Sadly, we have also had to deal with a lot of rude fellow travelers. Nevertheless, there are always a much larger number of good, decent people sharing the highway with us, and we have met many of them right here at GoComics.

If anyone needs to dial 911, here, you can use mine…

It’s Swedish, like me…

…I am somewhat of a techno-illiterate myself, it’s just not that important to me… I hope I live long enough to see all these younger know-it-alls (the snarky ones, of course, not the helpful ones) have their own children and grandchildren showing them how to use the newest technology (with sniggers and eye-rolls..)

How things have changed! I cannot remember the last time I heard a “busy” signal, dialed a rotary dial, or used a telephone attached to a wall.

But I just checked and found out that there are still two million dial-up users on AOL. Who would have thought?

My first internet access involved a program I can’t remember the name of that was “shareware,” and got you your “handshake” through the modem.

Then, you clicked on Netscape Navigator to find internet sites, though there still were not very many. I mainly used another now-forgotten program to check my e-mail (and I said the “dash”; there was a pause there that I pronounced.

Does anyone know what year his originally appeared? I’ve been noting Bill’s style becoming more experimental and confident. Wondering if this is in the later years.

I would say Calvin’s Dad is a man among men.

Telecalvin is even worse!

Anyone know what year this was originally published? Looks like later work.

1.For those of us in on the dawn of personal computers – we are the older generation now, so don’t use that as an excuse for being illiterate.

2. “Even coming down out of the trees was probably a bad idea” — Douglas Adams

I don’t want to say how long I’ve been around, but 1200 baud was a really blazing modem speed. Took 12 hours to download 1 MB of data.

Also email addresses were not as simple as sombody@someserver.com. You had to tell your email program which routers to take to get there. Our work computer would dial up twice a day to download and send mail. Local mail (inside the building) was more or less instantaneous.

At home, I’d dial into the work computer to download mail after dinner and dial in again before bed to send it. Sometimes I’d also repeat the process in the morning.

On the other hand, viruses were unknown as was spam, adware and all the other “enhancements” to your “browsing experience.”

We still had rotary phones growing up because my dad didn’t want to pay an extra dollar a month for touch tone

Got a letter from the folks over at BellJust to let me know for my next phone callI could walk outside and yell!

I used to really enjoy local BBS’s! There’s something nice about local groups that’s been lost with the world-wide Internet, just like it’s sad that there is almost no local TV programs over the air any more like there used to be before the turn of the century.

In 1985 I started getting on BBS’s, at 300 baud, on a C-64 computer. Those were the days. Then the Internet around 1994, using the lynx browser.

1995: the year the Internet went commercial. I still remember that momentous year on the Internet.

Remember Dial-Up, folks? I do.

I like my Internet. I can always pretend that I forgot to check the Email. I agree with Calvin’s Dad about the phone, though. Too intrusive. Of course, it can always be accidentally turned offMy Dad’s first Internet provider was so small and local he was actually able to bring his computer into their office where they set it up for him.

When I had dial up, I signed into AOL and it made a noise like a rocket blasting off.

That was only when the phone connection wasn’t being used.

xxx

In those days all you needed was a phone line…and a modem. You didn’t use any special connection.

Yes, yes, it is so!!

They also have no cable TV or video recorder options for the exact same reason: it’s bad enough that they have just a regular antenna TV in the house, that’s why!

I had a CAT NOVATION 300 baud acoustic coupled modem.

My first account was a 30 day free trial with Prodigy that came with my new computer. I loved the different discussion groups and the sites that were available. When I later left that group and tossed that computer, I lost a lot of valuable information that I would love to get back.

I agree with Dad. The telephone is the worst invention of all mankind.

I had two tin cans connected by a taut string. The contraption actually worked !!

Because your parents think keeping you from learning new technology, which is what your future holds, is somehow going to help your future prospects. In short, your parents are kinda dumb.

It can attract trolls that’s why.

I was on ARPAnet ten years before it went public. Mostly what we did was share data and send simple UUCP bang path messages.

This strip is from 1995? So prescient, it’s almost scary. “Scary” is Calvin with Roku.