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It blew mine, in the same way pong did, but more so. I wanted to hear other's stories about their first time on the internet. I'm younger than most here, so my pong experience will be different. But there were similarities in how I heard about and experienced both. And I think we were the first adults to get on the 'net.
Pong: There was some talk about this new game, but growing up in the suburban 60's, my life was more about racing around on bikes and playing sports (when a girl playing sports paid a dear price for that). I thought it was stupid to play a game on a tv...the board wouldn't fit and you'd knock it over and the pieces would go flying.
Well, then my brother got one for his birthday and as my father was hooking it up the to tv, I was still trying to understand and when the screen went snowy and then black, I thought he'd broken the tv for sure and I was about to leave the room before the cursing started. But then the paddles came on and my father and brother started moving the knobs on that big, angled box and the ball bounced around.
This was big and I actually had an adrenaline rush. We'd never seen anything like it before.
(Do young people even understand this sort of complete change? Will they ever? It's like saying: 'you'll put the car in the wall'. But aren't they more open to that sort of thing...like a completely new, never-before-understood concept is just something they expect now? So that putting a car in a wall isn't so far-fetched to them...because nothing is so far-fetched? Ah, I digress)
Of course, my brother and I played and played and after a week, we conquered it and were bored with it. But we had a sense that this was a real game changer, and then I took notice whenever the word "computer" came up. I honestly don't know if I'd ever heard the word before pong, but I know I did after. Perhaps I was paying more attention. Or perhaps the world was, and so it would come up more.
Internet: Some time in the early 90s we were inundated with floppy disks in the mail from AOL and Prodigy. I kept chucking them, but they were coming at a rate of about one a week, at least, and frankly, I was getting annoyed at all these disks piling up in landfills. Everyone was getting them. We had a computer, since I had been talked into getting one by my then husband so that our child could play and learn on the computer, since that was the future. (I wasn't fooled...I knew hubby wanted that "toy" for himself - but I did know it was the future for our child...and time proved that true).
I'd occasionally hear about this thing called the internet, but again, during the early 90s I understood it about as well as I understood pong before I saw it. It was the same with my friends...some vague thing called the internet. And then there was the World Wide Web...something that sounded foreboding. We didn't know it was the same thing.
So, like many (I'm sure), one day I decided to pop one of the dang disks into the computer. Got to the C prompt (remember that?), typed in what the directions told me to type in, and the black screen exploded into a white one (and again, I thought I'd broken it the way I thought my dad broke the tv) with BIG letters and NO advertising (that I recall).
I felt the same adrenaline rush that I felt when I finally "got" pong. But it was really hard to actually find anything. And it was quite a while before I found a site called Yahoo, which I thought was a *fabulous* thing, because I could finally get to what I was looking for. Sort of. I told the hubby we should invest in this company called Yahoo, but he thought it was a fad. And he wasn't interested in the internet (he would change his mind, as we all did).
Well, I surfed (not a term I knew back then) and surfed and surfed and ran up our phone bill to 4x it's normal rate (hubby and I, erm, "chatted" about that too...lol) because I didn't understand how that worked.
I knew everything was about to change. And I was totally hooked. I learned to curb my addiction though.
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure that there's a more significant technological event that has happened in my lifetime.
So. What's your first internet experience? Does it relate to your experience of pong?
It blew mine, in the same way pong did, but more so. I wanted to hear other's stories about their first time on the internet. I'm younger than most here, so my pong experience will be different. But there were similarities in how I heard about and experienced both. And I think we were the first adults to get on the 'net.
Pong: There was some talk about this new game, but growing up in the suburban 60's, my life was more about racing around on bikes and playing sports (when a girl playing sports paid a dear price for that). I thought it was stupid to play a game on a tv...the board wouldn't fit and you'd knock it over and the pieces would go flying.
Well, then my brother got one for his birthday and as my father was hooking it up the to tv, I was still trying to understand and when the screen went snowy and then black, I thought he'd broken the tv for sure and I was about to leave the room before the cursing started. But then the paddles came on and my father and brother started moving the knobs on that big, angled box and the ball bounced around.
This was big and I actually had an adrenaline rush. We'd never seen anything like it before.
(Do young people even understand this sort of complete change? Will they ever? It's like saying: 'you'll put the car in the wall'. But aren't they more open to that sort of thing...like a completely new, never-before-understood concept is just something they expect now? So that putting a car in a wall isn't so far-fetched to them...because nothing is so far-fetched? Ah, I digress)
Of course, my brother and I played and played and after a week, we conquered it and were bored with it. But we had a sense that this was a real game changer, and then I took notice whenever the word "computer" came up. I honestly don't know if I'd ever heard the word before pong, but I know I did after. Perhaps I was paying more attention. Or perhaps the world was, and so it would come up more.
Internet: Some time in the early 90s we were inundated with floppy disks in the mail from AOL and Prodigy. I kept chucking them, but they were coming at a rate of about one a week, at least, and frankly, I was getting annoyed at all these disks piling up in landfills. Everyone was getting them. We had a computer, since I had been talked into getting one by my then husband so that our child could play and learn on the computer, since that was the future. (I wasn't fooled...I knew hubby wanted that "toy" for himself - but I did know it was the future for our child...and time proved that true).
I'd occasionally hear about this thing called the internet, but again, during the early 90s I understood it about as well as I understood pong before I saw it. It was the same with my friends...some vague thing called the internet. And then there was the World Wide Web...something that sounded foreboding. We didn't know it was the same thing.
So, like many (I'm sure), one day I decided to pop one of the dang disks into the computer. Got to the C prompt (remember that?), typed in what the directions told me to type in, and the black screen exploded into a white one (and again, I thought I'd broken it the way I thought my dad broke the tv) with BIG letters and NO advertising (that I recall).
I felt the same adrenaline rush that I felt when I finally "got" pong. But it was really hard to actually find anything. And it was quite a while before I found a site called Yahoo, which I thought was a *fabulous* thing, because I could finally get to what I was looking for. Sort of. I told the hubby we should invest in this company called Yahoo, but he thought it was a fad. And he wasn't interested in the internet (he would change his mind, as we all did).
Well, I surfed (not a term I knew back then) and surfed and surfed and ran up our phone bill to 4x it's normal rate (hubby and I, erm, "chatted" about that too...lol) because I didn't understand how that worked.
I knew everything was about to change. And I was totally hooked. I learned to curb my addiction though.
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure that there's a more significant technological event that has happened in my lifetime.
So. What's your first internet experience? Does it relate to your experience of pong?
I remember pong. Played it all the time at my favorite hangout bar. lol That was in the mid to late 80s. I never touched a computer till 1998 when my cousin bought one for himself for his birthday. We were room mates at the time and, I admit, I sorta 'took it over'. It opened up a whole new world for me. One of the first websites I found was Classmates which, then, was part of a forum website called Delphi. One day I noticed a blue button that said "My Delphi" so I clicked on it and, boy, did I ding a LOT of stuff...and people! Eventually Classmates broke off with it's own website but I'm still a member of Delphi all these years later and still have many of the same online friends I met back then. It was great fun learning just what all was 'out there' on the WWW. I even checked out the dating websites but got over that pretty fast. lol Never was nervous or scared of it but always worried about wrecking the computer somehow. The sad thing is that even after all these years on computers I am STILL computer illiterate and that aggravates me.
Oh yeah...those AOL disks we were inundated with? Found out they were great to hang around the yard and trees to keep the birds out of the fruit and garden! I guess they flashed just enough when they revolved in the breeze.
I remember thinking my friend's Pong game was amazing. And when other games came along, like Tetris, it was even more amazing.
I remember the first time I saw email like it happened yesterday. It was the late 1980s and I was in grad school. This thing called "Bitnet" had been invented, and academics were using it to communicate with each other. I was in my professor's office and she showed me how she sent an email via Bitnet. Somehow she had attached the draft of an article, but I am not sure how she did it. When an answer email came back a few minutes later and she showed me, I literally gasped. LOL How times have changed. I also remember getting a 5600 baud modem and thinking it was the fastest thing ever.
^ lol...too funny. 5600 baud. And bitnet and delphi. Ah. Isn't it funny to reminisce about them? They were so HUGE, and now we chuckle about it.
Actually, the 'net still feels new to me. I suppose that may be because so many things are still new about it...so much to still find/read.
I remember stepping waaaayyy out of my comfort zone when PS2 came out and I wanted to buy it for my son for xmas. He was unusual in that he never asked for outrageous things or long lists for xmas (sneakers were another story), so I wanted to surprise him. But PS2 was so new and everyone wanted it that it was impossible to get it, so I read and read and finally learned about a shopping bot and, scared that I would ruin the computer, I downloaded one (1995? 96?) and for three days that thing hunted for me. And that robot found one on the third day...buzzer went off and it was sold out (walmart? amazon?) in 5 minutes. But I got one for him.
Not sure how that relates, except towards being willing to put that disk into the machine that first time.
My first job out of college in 1975 was as a programmer. I got my first PC in the mid 1980s. At that time you used CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL. I was a Prodigy fan. The first modem I remember was 1200baud. You dialed a local number so you didn't have large phone bills, but you had to make sure it was a local number. The internet followed many years later.
I had a pong-ish game around 1975-76. A console with two big knobs -- somebody had to play left-handed. The games were squash, tennis, doubles tennis (woohoo!) and hockey.
First internet experience was learning early PC-based Lexis and Westlaw during law school in the early '90s.
All I can think of, when I think of the early internet days, is how SLOOOOOOWWWWWWW it was! You dial up a web page, and go make yourself a sandwich, come back to see if it's loaded yet...nope, still loading......go eat the sandwich, come back.......hey the page loaded! Hmmm, interesting link, think I'll click on it......page loading.....go watch some TV, wait for the page to load......
seriously!
My good memories about the early internet days, was when Ebay was new and I could actually make money on it LOL. You could actually scroll through an entire category in about 3 pages. Those were the days.
I was sharing a house with my brother when we first tried aol. We got a shared email account, never thinking we might want privacy someday in sending or receiving emails. That loud dial up noise to connect, and having to choose between being online and being available on the phone. When we first got the Internet on our office computers, several of us didn't bother to find out how to access the Internet. Our computers were for word processing, what would we want the Internet for at work? Ten years later, the Internet went out one day and people were going home because they couldn't do anything without it. Then the first cell phone. My grandmother who could remember the day her family installed their first phone, marveled! Pay phones disappeared. Ten dollar one minute phone calls from hotel rooms were a thing of the past. And my first day with a smart phone. I was waiting in line at a grocery store and realized I could amuse myself online with my lovely new apps. So I opened YouTube and watched a road runner cartoon. Then called my brother to announce what I was doing, as we shared our road runner affinity. He approved.
Now, where my top priority for a retirement place was a few good bookstores, I live on a small remote island with no book store, but where I can buy any book I want with a few taps of the finger and read it instantly.
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