The Internet?

[jammies]

Around 1993-1994 using a CUUG (Calgary Unix Users Group) dial-up account.

Back in them days, y'all used GOPHER to find stuff and there weren't none of this fancy Web crappie - even your email was something called PINE that was all text, and if you wanted porn by gawd you accessed the USENET. Nowadays you kids think nothin' of just downloading some movie or 500 billion crapass Nellie songs, but back then if you wanted even a dang picture it was an overnight thing and half the time it came out all scroobled up and you couldn't tell if it was Sharon Stone nekkid or autopsy pictures from Roswell 1947 - I tell you true!

[Drunk Skunk]

Originally Posted by jammies

Around 1993-1994 using a CUUG (Calgary Unix Users Group) dial-up account.

Back in them days, y'all used GOPHER to find stuff and there weren't none of this fancy Web crappie - even your email was something called PINE that was all text, and if you wanted porn by gawd you accessed the USENET. Nowadays you kids think nothin' of just downloading some movie or 500 billion crapass Nellie songs, but back then if you wanted even a dang picture it was an overnight thing and half the time it came out all scroobled up and you couldn't tell if it was Sharon Stone nekkid or autopsy pictures from Roswell 1947 - I tell you true!

[Rathji]

When I was in grade 6, in 1987, we talked via modem with a group of students from Penbrooke Meadows elementary. Isn't really the internet though.

When I was in Jr high(89-90ish), we got these small portable telnet machines to take home. With them we could telnet into the UofC and connect with Simon Fraser institute in BC to get on a BBS they ran. SO technically that was my first internet experience on this 5 line LCD black and white text display.

My first experience with the internet as we know it now, was ~ 1995 spending hours downloading swimsuit model pictures, and playing around on www.molson.com/canadian, doing a hockey pool and other stuff they had going on there. Then I finally figured out that I couldn't download a CDROM driver, I had to go buy an actual CD Rom drive, and I managed to play Warcraft 2 online once. It took so long to bugger around connecting to the dialup, and we would disconnect whenever anyone lifted the phone, that I don't think I ever played more than 10 mins of that before I gave up.

[pepper24]

My buddy Al Gore told me about this great invention back in the day. My other good buddy John McCain several years later told me about the Blackberry.

We're all great buddies.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Eastern Girl

I don't remember how old I was, but the first thing I did was set up an email account of my own. That was about all I did. My friends wanted me to go to messageboards and such, but I always thought they were too geeky....

Anyways, I was fairly anti-internet at the time. It takes me awhile to come around to new technology.

So, how does it feel to have finally given in to your geeky side?

[CaptainCrunch]

2025 when it became self aware, however instead of exterminating mankind it took the shape of a 40 year old fat guy and moved into my basement.

[The Ditch]

I heard Bill Curtis just found the internet.

[MaxPower]

They have the internet on computers now?!

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by V

If BBS's count, I spent hours and hours and hours playing LORD.

Me too. First thing I did was I connect to the internet was try to find somewhere to play LORD. I think that was around 94 or 95 with CADVision.

[bradster57]

I remember getting our brand new Pentium 75 in 1995 with the 14.4K modem. I got home from school one afternoon and decided I'd try this internet thing out. I double clicked the program and the computer started dialing out. I had no idea it was going to do this and didn't know who it was calling. I promptly shut my computer off before it finished dialing.

[Russic]

lol, oh cadvision ... you were a dream come true for 13 year olds everywhere. I had "used" the internet the year prior (94 or 95), but it was so slow it was a little useless back then.

[JohnnyFlame]

All I remember about computers in the eighties was frustration. Slow and goofy. Actually forget the eighties that carried right on till late in the nineties. Now that the technology has improved I wish the internet was like cable should be --You would only have the websites/channels you want and could pick them off a list of established sites(bookmarks and things like Stumble upon help in this regard). Then there would be a category of new sites vying for attention that you could check out but that were filtered into categories . You would have very specific search engines that didn't return 85% crap. I'd prefer it got more niche like and my access points would only search for the stuff I'm interested in and completely filter out the rubbish.

So in answer to the question I was introduced to the internet very early on if you could actually recognize that as the internet. It started to take shape in the nineties and I'm waiting for it to transform into something far superior to a Google(just compile whatever is out there) environment to much more a collection of my sites of interest with a much more selective search engine.

[mykalberta]

I remember when the name "US Robotics" meant something.

[MJK]

Originally Posted by brownie

Yeah just wondering when you were first introduced to the internet? And what were your first things you recall doing with the internet?

Mine was in 1996 when I set up my first email account.

Mine was close to '96 as well. The first thing I remember doing was getting guitar tabs! Shortly after that I used a modem to call my buddy so we could play warcraft against each other!

[RW99]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Played with it a bit in high school, but never really got onto it until we got it at home in 1997. Being an 18 year old kid at the time, I'm sure you can guess one of the big things I was looking up.

Lottery tickets?

My first intertubes experience was going over to a friend's house, using this magical thing called 'Webcrawler'.

My first computer experience was two friends talking about 'software' and they wouldn't tell me what they were talking about. I thought it had to do with underwear

[tete]

I got an email account and took a "learn the internet" evening course my first year of university at the UofR in 1994. My brother in Winnipeg already had an email address, so I would email him, but he was the only one I knew. And yup, it was PINE that I used for email. I don't think I used Netscape/IE heavily until about 1998 or so. I got my first computer (laptop) with a dial up modem when I started my Master's in 1998.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Back in Jr. High, we used to log into BBSes and played LORD and BRE and the like. Or we'd log into Octopode which was a local chat BBS and flirt with girls online

Then in 1995 I won $10,000 in cash in prizes on a TV phone-in gameshow on YTV called Destructo Brother's Loot, in which I used the $4000 that I had won to buy my fancy schmancy P75 (which was literally obsolete in two weeks when the P90 and Win 95 got released). Got Cadvision soon thereafter (14.4kbps ftw!) and have been in awe of the Intarweb since.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Back in Jr. High, we used to log into BBSes and played LORD and BRE and the like. Or we'd log into Octopode which was a local chat BBS and flirt with guys (pretending to be girls) online

Then in 1995 I won $10,000 in cash in prizes on a TV phone-in gameshow on YTV called Destructo Brother's Loot, in which I used the $4000 that I had won to buy my fancy schmancy P75 (which was literally obsolete in two weeks when the P90 and Win 95 got released). Got Cadvision soon thereafter (14.4kbps ftw!) and have been in awe of the Intarweb since.

Fixed that for you..

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

1995 for me. The dreaded Cadvision. I remember having to download naked pictures of Jenny McCarthy onto a disk for viewing. I hadn't honed my skills yet, so I printed them for off-computer use. "What happened to all the ink in the printer?!"

LOL @ Jenny McArthy! That or Yasmin Bleeth. Yeah... those were the days

Originally Posted by kermitology

Fixed that for you..

Damn those Jr. High punks...

[Eastern Girl]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

So, how does it feel to have finally given in to your geeky side?

It feels right.