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Funny thing is, I was a nerd for getting it back then. There were just around 30,000 users when I joined. It was the cheapest way to get a true internet email address at the time. When the user count got up into the millions, I had switched to the free account model with no dial up access just because I wanted to keep the address. I got another email address only because of the perception of what it meant to have an AOL address at that time, but I didn't drop the AOL account. I still occasionally get emails from people I have not seen or heard from in several years. It drives me nuts when people change their email addresses more often than their tires.
Funny to think anyone considered you a nerd for getting AOL! The nerdier among us wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near AOL or Compuserve.
I got on the Internet because I started working on a project with a team back on the east coast. Our "tech" company didn't have any internet connection! A co-worker researched it and we found a local ISP so we both got individual accounts, as did the people back east. The alternative would have been to start mailing floppy disks back and forth - wasn't acceptable!
I didn't do much on BBs, since Usenet was coming into its own right about the time I got my first ISP account.
I started working as a professional programmer in 1980, working for a market research service bureau in Atlanta. We produced reports with all sorts of statistics for clients. When we implemented some of them, one of the company's founders went to Ga Tech (his alma mater) and literally knocked on doors to ask experts how to do the calculations across rows of data. There was no web to go search for this stuff. Programming was literally harder in those days because when you had a problem, you could not ask Siri what to do about it.
When I first got in the computer business, computer memory was $1.00 per location and the largest I ever saw (could be built) at that time was 64K and that would cost $64K (yes $64,000.00).
Some years back (1980's) my company sold a WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet) publishing/composition system for about $125K (yes $125,000.00) each. The output devices ran about $50K so $175K to compose and print. Today I can do the same thing (actually more and easier) for less then $500.00.
28 years ago last month I got my first modem, a slick 2400-baud modem at 50% off as a member of a user group (Stanford Macintosh User Group = SMUG) at a local Mac meet in Silicon Valley. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Mac-head.
At the same time, I belonged to BMUG = Berkeley Macintosh User Group.
That was one of the cool things about how people reacted. Most assumed you were a nerd and must be smart to figure out how to run one. Most also saw no real reason to have one. What would you really need with a home computer? They sent people to the moon or were something businesses used.
But my particular friends were all techies, to one degree or another. We were all part of science fiction fandom, and most of the people who went to filks and conventions had one or wanted one. We included some of the supernerds who advanced that old turbo xt to something with far more capabilitys by tinkering and experimenting. I worked as a programmer in the mid 80's and only one other of our staff had their own. Most of the old timers didn't see why you'd need one at home.
But it was interesting how everyone assumed you a) must be smart and b) must be good at math if you dealt with computers. Intelligence probably does play a part, but I'm awful at math.
My son who keeps telling me I *have* to get facebook was sitting on my lap playing kids games on my computer at four. For him they've always been around and used as part of daily life.
But even for me, many of the people I've known and many of the choices about life wouldn't have been if there was no home computer and no internet since I would never have met them. Those of us who are not really 'normal' but see things a bit differently were probably the first to try it since it let us find others like us we hadn't at home.
Heh. Remember @ parties at cons? We were the "in" group.
I ran a BBS, initially at 2400 baud, then when the 56K modems came out I got some of the first ones a week before they hit the stores.
I was the second or third place for the public to get internet in Springfield/Eugene in Oregon. The first being EFN.
Lots of memories there.
Before public internet, I subscribed to a local BBS that was on PCRelay. I could log on, zip up a newsfeed, and use an offline reader to read and reply. I picked up a used 1200 bps modem at an auction. It wasn't USR compatible, so I spent some time digging up docs and soldering cables to get it to work. Fortunately, my local library had a copy of The RS-232 Solution. A BBS subscription only bought you an hour a day, so you had to get on, download your traffic and get off.
I was working at OHSU in the early '90s and taking classes at PSU, so had a Jove account in the days before AOHell ruined Usenet. You could post a question online and get responses from Nobel laureates. I met Douglas Adams online while he was researching Last Chance To See. When the internet went public, I was user #300 at Teleport. I had to pay for a second phone line because I was online so much. I kept asking friends for their email addresses and getting blank looks. I still remember the first web site I ever saw. There were three sites on the internet, one at CERN, one in California somewhere and one other I forget. The web browser was running on a Mac because Microsoft refused to support TCP/IP. PC users were screwed. Windows 95 was a POS anyway, so I was running OS/2 at the time. Windows 98 was the first real PC operating system.
I still log onto Usenet once in a while. Google was supposed to maintain a usenet archive when they bought out Deja News, but they pretty much ignore it any more.
A BIG FAT NO.
Floppy disks? Even "compact hard floppy"? Phone dial-up? all day downloads? Multiple floppy discs for just ONE program? Second/third phone lines JUST for the computer? Dial phones? Daisy wheel printers? tearing off the terminal strips on the paper? Separating the pages off the printer? Solid yellow or green monitors that weighed as much as a Toyota Tercel? {'memba them?}
MY first computer {not purchased by my father who worked for IBM} Cost me $2,650...that's DOLLARS in the mid-eighties! It was an IBM clone with TWO, Count 'Em TWO internal floppy drives, printer and solid green monitor. It had a word processor that was NOT the ever popular MS word. I lost it in a house fire.
The first I was on the 'net was the mid nineties..with a phone handset cradle connection to an external modem on the >cable connection< {EARLY subscriber when new} at my brothers. He was MUCH more computer tech savvy than I and ahead of me.NO, I correct that. First he had a dial up phone handset cradle on the phone line, a second phone line put in JUST FOR THE COMPUTER. Then came the cable connection, one of the FIRST connectors to cable!
MY OWN first online net connection was dial-up at the turn of the century/millenium. It was Dial-up{internal modem}, I used AOL {on a disk found at the entryway to EVERY store it seemed,but my boss would have provided it}. Actually , I still use AOL, I find it so easy to use, but I am getting a bit tired of their high price for annual use. My Boss provided me with an at-home model DELL so I could work from home, wasn't that nice? It was a cast off from his usual newer improved model, and it had stuff on it from his kids on it he wanted to save, even when it became totally obsolete. Then came a new DELL model and a cable internet connection in 2004! MY what a difference!
Now I have a DELL laptop, wireless, fast and unencumbersome. I can take it with me, use it almost anywhere-even without a connection to a wall outlet {for up to 7 hours}.
Great thread. It's funny to see the range of the technology that people started out with and consider "old."
I remember the old BBS's - having a list of local phone numbers that you could dial up on your modem. The first real computer I had was a Zenith that we bought used for $1000 (it was actually the Heathkit H89 assembled by Zenith for those who didn't want to build it themselves). It ran CP/M, and I learned the ins and outs of that operating system to the point I was writing my own programs (what they would call apps today). The first modem I had was a 300 BAUD direct-connect; when I got a 1200 BAUD modem, I was ecstatic. After that, I was able to use PC's at college or work, so I didn't buy another computer until the late 90's.
Funny how things change. Back then, if you were into that stuff, you were considered a real nerd. I didn't see the day when everyone would embrace going online, let alone being glued to their portable devices.
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