Remembering life in the stone age, circa 1977

Comments from a Wired interview with William Gibson, who reflects on how new music styles (in this case punk) spread in a pre-Internet age.

I suspect — and I don’t think this is nostalgia — but it may have been able to become kind of a richer sauce, initially. It wasn’t able to instantly go from London to Toronto at the speed of light. Somebody had to carry it back to Toronto or wherever, in their backpack and show it, physically show it to another human. Which is what happened. And compared to the way that news of something new spreads today, it was totally stone age. Totally stone age! There’s something remarkable about it that’s probably not going to be that evident to people looking at it in the future. That the 1977 experience was qualitatively different, in a way, than the 2007 experience, say.

Whether it was a 'richer' or otherwise better way of discovering what was new, I can't say.

But it was certainly different.

Still, like Gibson, I'm certainly glad to have discovered Gangnam style, which in 1977 I no doubt would have missed...