The internet is mostly known for being a nightmare for your privacy, but I also think there is another side to that coin. I mean, it is insanely easy (and common) these days to do all your internet communication with messengers, that have pretty much unbreakable encryption (Signal). That was not possible for the average person before computers and the internet. The government could easily read all you private letters.
Also, all our web traffic is fully encrypted with https (although that is more of a security than a privacy thing) and most modern phones automatically do full disk encryption for your files. It is also trivialilly easy to use a proper end to end encrypted cloud storage (proton, tuta etc.) or even use unsafe cloud storage like Google Drive as long as you encrypt your files locally before uploading.
I know, the internet is still a net negative for most peoples privacy, but it is pretty cool how far we’ve come with encryption.
The enigma machine is over 80 years old now. That was just the last machine before modern computing. There were all sorts of other machines and techniques for cryptography long before the modern era. The first forms of encryption are over 3500 years old.
well of course they existed. But I can’t think of an example of a pre-internet era where forms of encryption of a grade high enough to stop law enforcement, and probably all/most government can read them, was easy and accessible enough that your average highschooler would without thinking about it encrypt a grocery list he’s sending to his mom.
So easy a child could use it… or the current secretary of war (with some minor mistakes of adding in reporters into rooms etc…).
The enigma machine was for government use for a military purpose. Common people had no need of anything like that. If I somehow implied I thought encryption was invented for the internet, let me clarify that: I don’t.