I remember my dad bringing home the top of the line Dell computer in 1996. (2GB hard drive!). We marvelled at being able to hear music from around the world.
Once, I tried to download a 25mb game demo, and it took almost eight hours to download at 28k.
In the mid 90's I remember inviting my friends over after school to use the new video chat feature we managed to hook up. It was pretty cool talking to random people around the world. Well, until some dude decided that he needed to show us his penis.
In the mid 90's I remember inviting my friends over after school to use the new video chat feature we managed to hook up. It was pretty cool talking to random people around the world. Well, until some dude decided that he needed to show us his penis.
Did Reggie ever apologize for that incident?
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Who is in charge of this product and why haven't they been fired yet?
I think my family had the Internet before I actually discovered what it was... but the earliest memory I have of using it was around grade 5 or 6, in the late 90s.
I remember making many different email addresses, and going into random chat rooms and bugging people. Then I downloaded ICQ, and would spend hours on that talking to people I had seen at school like, half an hour earlier. I'm not really sure how I managed to waste SO much time on the internet back then, considering I didn't know how to look anything up, and I don't think I knew the full extent of what the internet could actually do.
We had dial-up back then, and I remember my mom would get sooo mad at me cause when I would finally disconnect we'd have so many messages on the machine.
I remember coming home from junior high in about '95-'96 and mom had a new Pakard Bell computer sitting there. I managed to get on the internet and somehow stumbled upon a download link for Weezer's "El Scorcho" video probably through muchmusic.com.
So I start downloading it and the little box pops up and says the speed (1.4kbps?) and that it was going to take hours to finish. I figured that that meant I couldn't do anything else on the computer until it was done. So my mom, brother and I all sit around waiting hours for this video to download. Me cause I want to see it, and them cause they want to use the damn computer. So it finishes and it's a friggin' 20 second clip of the middle of the video.
I didn't download anything for a long time after that.
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!
CUUG here too, and also CIA which was a calgary based company which you'd use their computers to browse the net, it was a weird system, but ultimately failed.
It's funny, I have been talking about this recently with some people. I remember a time before it, but I don't know how I'd live with out it now.
I would have been about 14 when I first started using a modem and logging on to BBS's like Nucleus here in Calgary with my friend at his house. Before actual webpages existed as many here have also shared. Logging on to chat and play online text games or perhaps get in a download or two. It was slow and cumbersome. Often crashed or the service got knocked out, or the lines would be full. Took all night just to get online sometimes. But it was so new and different. And of course offered the things that teenaged males want, lol.
BY the time I was 16 I remember actually browsing the web at school with the original Netscape and using search engines like Webcrawler.
Of course around that time there were the big 4 service companies. AOL, Yahoo, Prodigy, and Compuserve. My first e-mail account was with IBM when I was 17, I think.
First internet exposure was 1990 when I started university. Before that it was all BBSs... and since my home computer was a Commodore 128, it was all Ivory @ 1200 baud. Once I got a PC, I started running Citadel. Anywho... this is about the internet...
The dialin to to the university got me on Gopher, Lynx, IRC, and a half-dozen mailing lists (back in the days before spam). I remember hordes of classmates getting their jollies from jumping into IRC, joining #lonelyhearts and pretending they were buxomous beauties. Oi. I tried some MUDDs, but after being beat down by a "tiny snail" I gave up on those rather quickly. As for usenet, alt.gillian.andersons.head.on.other.peoples.bodies was a favorite of mine....
You see, I wasn't all that interested in knowing about the trial. But I was more taken by the lack of ability of governments to control content. Unfortunately, they really didn't need to. Now the noise to signal ratio looks like lottery odds. Colbert's wikiality hits the nail on the head. We went from not having access to all the points of view to form an informed opinion to having so much "data" you can't tell fact from fiction anymore.
1996 when i graduated from high school and went to college...i signed up for an email account (can you believe I had to pay 20 bucks to get one through my school and i couldve just gotten a free one through hotmail/yahoo etc?).....I used it to talk to friends who had moved away....and I learned how to use chat.
I was so dumb though and every time I used a new application, I would open up another session of Netscape Navigator rather than just opening up multiple tabs....and I would x out of the first one and go to the 2nd one.
Haha..and now I design websites! Who wouldve thought I wouldve learned so much in the last 10 years or so!
I remember setting up a hotmail account in 1997.
1998 was when i got it at home, and ICQ consumed the remainder of my grade 12 life.
Hehe, I still remember my ICQ number, and the shortcuts like ctrl+shift+i
I remember using the internet in 1995 with a provider called CIAO which was based out of Trail BC. It was text based and free using my 14.4 K modem. Those were the days.
We used a program, I think it was called 'kermit' to talk to students in the states in Jr. High (93-95 ish). Right around the same time my brother and I had an account to a local BBS (Bulitin Board System)... something nerdy like Kittiara's Revenge or something, but it had a cool text based hockey game.
Haahaha, you were on Kitiara's Revenge? I was a regular there... Those were the days. What was yer handle, if you remember?
Aside from local BBSs, my first ISP was Prodigy. It was rife with corrupt moderators who would hook people up with free accounts and stuff. Prodigy was awesome.
I think this internet fad might be finally catching on.
I had a college teacher in maybe '94 and he ranted and raved about this internet thing and how it was going to change everything, especially journalism (he was teaching, IIRC, communications law).
I tried some MUDDs, but after being beat down by a "tiny snail" I gave up on those rather quickly.
Ah MUDs..
I used to play BBS doors like InFiNiTy CoMpLeX on Nucleus ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!") but when I found MUDs...
I don't remember which one, but I do remember making it up to an admin level for one MUD.. it was a pretty cool one, you could actually make new areas of the MUD right in game! So you'd "create new room east", go there, set the description ("You see a beautiful waterfall with a unicorn. The unicorn looks at you derisively."), create objects, mobs, etc.. it was very cool.
Been a long time since MUDs.. wow..
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
