What is your earliest Internet memory?
 

When I was an undergraduate at the University of California in the early 80s, I was in a Linguistics class where they gave us what was later called an email address. This worked within the UC computer system and we used it to submit homework, ask the professor questions, and have personal communications (about class-related content/work) with other students in the class.

I remember it seemed almost mystical. The idea of personal computers (Apple was just launching) being able to communicate in a web or network was mind-boggling.

Later on, we learned about its beginnings on "The Well," out of San Francisco, and I time it with the original MacIntosh (?) and the gray scale graphics. Some time later on, I was signing up on BBS's on a rudimentary pc at home, and eventually AOL, which used graphics that were "drawn" with repeated keyboard characters at the time--I kid you not!

I'd love to flesh out this memory with others who were primed at that time to embrace the new technology. I'd also love to hear anyone of any age's story about early internet experiences.

~the tapu

My earliest memory of the internet is an auditory one - the boing boing, crackle crackle, swish sound of my modem connecting me to a new world.

Oh my god, of course. I can hear it if I just think about it. Can you place it in time, or development? Were you on BBSs before and then on a service like AOL? Do you know anything about The Well?

It was 1994, AOL was my service provider. I don't know anything about The Well.

Me and two heterosexual couples chatting with randoms over aol at the home of the only one of us who owned a computer

1994

Best ever
 

found the best friends ever...............
Best Loves ever

But it has changed and this make Me very sad:confused:

Early 90s in college. Had a professor who was insisting that we all communicate with him via email. Which meant going to a computer lab and getting an account, and so on. So I didn't. And the teacher was frustrated.

Then a different teacher, not my teacher, and someone who I had become good friends with through a writing group, told me about email and took me to the lab to set up an account with me and we both emailed and did some archaic version of instant messaging and I was like, Whoa.


Then said teacher got totally addicted to the wealth of worthless and some worthy information on the internet and spent a couple of months staying up all night at the computer lab printing stacks of paper. Including a list of the 20 most creative ways to fail your finals in college. Which he printed and we ran around campus at 2am tacking up on the walls of big test rooms.

A few years later I was working on my senior thesis and it turned out most of my information (data on violence against women in prison) was available online through underground sources, vs in books or newspapers, and I was one of the first people in my department to turn in a thesis largely sourced from internet research, rather than books. ( I still did good old fashioned letter writing and interviews, but due to the nature of the subject, there was a lot more info online than individuals who wanted to go on the record talking to me)

I didn't know how to copy paste, so I had to hand write out all of the URLs in my notebook and then type them out again on paper to site sources.

I feel very old now.

That is fucking excellent!

My long-term ex and I got our first computer in 1989, it cost a fortune, was very large and I got so excited every day when I dialed up and heard: "You've got mail"!

:computer:

We got our first in home internet connection in my junior year of high school. I used to sneak down to the office at night, wait for the dial-up connection... and chat with folks in Scotland and England on Yahoo! Voice Chat...

I was twelve years old, back in like 1998 or 1999, on AOL. I am glad to have left those days behind.

early 90s playing ascii oregon trail on those big boxy computers in second grade at school.

i think we got a computer at home when i was 8 or so (so 1996?) - i remember looking up stuff that i wasn't supposed to (specifically about paganism) and trying to hide it from my mom, hehehehe.

The grateful dead chat room on AOL.... Probably like 1995??? I was way to young to be in there and there were way too many old creepies but it was fun!!!!

oh man... I do remember the magic of the internet, this whole new world being opened to us... it was so mythical... so bizarre, the concept of it so wild.
It was about 1995... I looked up Who Framed Roger Rabbit, one of my fave ever movies, and came across a fansite... ahhhh the rush of nostalgia!

Earliest Internet memory
 

I read a piece on the difference between Jiffy Mix and homemade cornbread on USENET in one of the social culture newsgroups. It was a brilliant and hilarious article. This was before AOL, or blogs, etc. The ISPs were Delphi, Earthlink, Mindspring and some others ... and dial-up modems ruled. USENET was available at most (all?) universities.

yes, Earthlink an Prodigy. I had a computer in 1985 but I think my ex and I really connected to the internet via prodigy when she was going to China to adopt our oldest...we were so excited that we could instantly see the weather. By her second trip in 2006 we were skyping

Yes, I remember Prodigy... and I had an Atari computer in 1985. I got it from Chemical Bank in NYC. They were giving away Atari computers to customers to use their online banking service called "Pronto." Someone gave me a demo in the bank and I signed up.

I was able to connect to some BBS boards, but not the internet in 1985. When I finally did get on in the early 1990s, I needed to know DOS and that wasn't happening. I finally got on the internet in the summer of 1995 using Delphi then I switched to Earthlink and stayed with them for a few years.

I remember in the late 80s seeing my first computer in a college accounting class and being shown how to navigate Dos to connect to the email system to submit homework

i was 30 years old when i got my first home computer which may seem strange to those who have not known life with out a computer...and it is hard to explain how an inatimate object can make your heart race when it says "you've got mail" but looking back...it did...hahahaha :)

My earliest memory of the Internet was when I was 14 and my father got our first family computer. I remember using it for school reports and looking recipes for cookies. I do kinda miss the sound of dial up tho.