No phones and no computers?
That’s gotta be a typo. More like, living life like 1876.
They probably mean mobile phones. When I started living in Canada several years ago, I was amazed to see how many households didn’t have landlines, though I assume at one time they did.
I had a PC in 1983, bought it to play Adventure, and as a sideline do grad school. We also had a phone, but then again we had one in the 1950’s. I took a high school class in computer programming in 1969 with modems, maybe this was in an different time dimension?
They wore mullets in 1876?
It’s simple, really. They chose to live permanently in the year before I was born, for sanity’s sake and all.
I can just imagine how it ended -
Dad…I just can’t listen to “Come on Eileen” one more god damned time!
Or maybe junior sneaked into the old man’s bedroom and cut the mullet and killed the dream
My first thought was “what an interesting blog that would have been to follow.” My second thought was “blog in the 1980s was a drink for pirates.”
Grog ?
Oh, it was definitely 1986 they were simulating. 
Though, no phones or computers? Maybe they meant mobile phones, and maybe computers weren’t as common or powerful as they are now. But the idea of The Comoputer was there, and it was definitely influential. In 1984, after all, Time had voted the computer ‘Person of the Year’. And, I graduated from electronics school in 1985 and bought my first serious computer in 1986 with money I earned from my first serious job…
And you bought a modem that you used your land-line phone on, too, didn’t you? You were in the industry.
I didn’t have a computer until around 1990. It was a 386.
We had computers in the house from around 1981 (Apples, which my Dad taught me basic programming on). I was attending computer classes in 1982 as a 5 yr old, and by 1986 my brother had a Spectrum of his own. So 1986 was definitely the computer age.
The U.S. Census Bureau says 8.2 percent of householders had a computer in 1984, and that rose to 15 percent by 1990. I’m also assuming things were similar in Canada, which seems reasonable to me. So computer ownership wasn’t unheard of, but it was far from common.
I’ll be honest. If I had the choice today between no computer and a state-of-the-art 1986 computer, I’d rather just have no computer. I wouldn’t have the patience to deal with that old of a computer, and there’s not much that I could do with it anyway.
Mac Plus came out in 1986. Other than needing a spare paperclip to “eject” a recalcitrant floppy, I dare say you’d have no problem with the interface. Probably the only thing you’d really notice is that you could only have one program open at a time (Multifinder came along in 1987).
Dark Castle came out in 1986 and kicked ass.
Infocom was still in the text adventure biz in 1986 but not for long. Most, if not all of their popular games were available for Macintosh.
who didn’t love creating bitmap art with MacPaint?
MacWrite was great too.
You’d be fine.
1986 wasn’t much different from today. In 1986, I didn’t have an iPod, but I had a Walkman. I didn’t have a computer, but I played videogames. I had an Atari 5200. The Nintendo NES system was out, too. There were many entertaining games for both. The Atari 5200 had what was then the best home version of Pac-Man. No DVD players, but I had VHS. I had cable TV. The Challenger explosion was the first true event endlessly covered on the news, at least other than the JFK assassination. I didn’t have a cell phone, but pay phones were plentiful and a phone call only cost about 20¢. Of course, going without a cell phone today is harder. I don’t even know where the closest pay phone is now. But having already lived through 1986, I could do it again for a year and it wouldn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to me. Just give me a cane to shake at the young whippersnappers who keep walking on my lawn.
cochrane, you mention everything about the tech ‘revolution’ except information.
The world of information is literally at our fingertips now.
We didn’t live in an information vacuum in 1986. I mentioned cable TV. CNN was coming into its own. Newspapers and magazines were still relevant. I don’t feel more informed now than I did then. It’s just that the information is more electronically based now than it was then. But I still could keep just as well informed without the Internet.
Cochrane, in 1986 one could not access the complete Code of Federal Regulation on line at any time. I just spent a week throwing out 93% of all the paper files in my house because the only ones I need anymore are the ISO standards, and I expect to have them on jackdrive by Friday.
I fail to see how such information would be relevant to my everyday life, now or in 1986. That’s not information I have ever found myself needing. Nor have most people IMO. YMMV. In 1986, if I needed such information, I would’ve gone to the library. And I would not find it onerous to do so today. But how many people need to look up the complete Code of Federal Regulation?