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Merlene › Likes
Poll: When did you first discover the internet, and what were your first impressions?
Joshua, 'Like' robot (frɐnc), Tsali, The Native of FF and 47 other people liked this
1999. blew my mind.
- vijay
Oh, and if you discovered the internet before the WWW existed, what was your first impression of that?
- Chrimmus Tad
from fftogo
I first started playing on the internet back in 1991 or 1992. A buddy showed me telnet bbs's and I was off to the race. I became an internet stud back in the time when the net was like 95% men. I think all of my dates in college were with women I met on internet bbs's. I met Lindsay that way. When I first started hearing about web browsing back in 93 or 94 I thought it was pretty stupid. Who'd want to look at that? It took a year or so for me to really "get" it.
- Chrimmus Tad
from fftogo
1997 and :O
- Moved to Facebook
from fftogo
First time on the WWW and not a BBS? '91 or '92. Thought it was BORING. Only scientific papers. Never thought it would fly. BBS was much fuller, had a broader scope of items. We had were Prodigy customers from '87 - '91, IIRC. '93 or '94, I saw someone selling their stuff online. Told the record company I was at (worked in the licensing dept. then) that it would be awesome if they put...
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- Admiral Anika
i remember netscape and those aol discs i got in the mail. wanted to try the "free trial"
- Alfredo
I remember playing a mud and when I realized that these guys couldn't understand me because they were playing in BRAZIL it totally blew my mind. I couldn't get over how amazing it was to be having conversations with people all over the world in real time. SideNote: room mate failed music appreciation the summer we found Muds.
- Chrimmus Tad
from fftogo
around 1997 I would guess. I swiped a 14.4 kbps modem out of our computer parts box and got all the settings off my dads computer and got it all set up. I think I was about 14 at the time. It was the cats pajamas. It was also a little disturbing once you got to like line 300 of that 400 line jpg and you found out you were actually looking at a shemale :*(
- Geoff Schultz
wait wut?
- Geoff Schultz
1994 but the school only had a 4800 baud modem so we were limited to BBS and usenet. Used it to read up on xfiles episodes before they were broadcast over here. I knew I'd be spending a lot of my adult life on it!
- alphaxion
It was 1995. We had AOL and Compuserve. I knew that I was in love.
- Shevonne
92 or 93. I remember trying to figured out how I'd find anything.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Those were some expensive shemales Dave!
- Geoff Schultz
I don't really know. I was in Young Astronauts in the fifth grade when I started coding and they had a networked computer that talked to some different things. In the nineties I ran a hacker BBS with a friend and his brother. I guess I first ran into unbound net in the early to mid nineties.
- Neal Jansons
1987. But it wasn't until a couple of years later that they had SLIP and then PPP so my first few years were all through a terminal connection. Although I was fascinated with Mosaic, I was an NNTP die-hard and didn't see the need of the web over it and Gopher. It wasn't until about 1997 or so that I finally got over my attachment to NNTP and embraced the web in all of its horror show glory.
- Akiva Moskovitz
A friend in high school and I would modem-talk, so that was late 80s, we would call each other's computers. I'd say like '88. The first time I got excited was with the WWW, using Mosaic to download satellite infrared images of the world. I was working tech support in college, and I kept telling people how cool it was- it was my desktop image or something.
- anna sauce
1995 and I couldn't understand what all the hype was about.
- Kenton
My first impression was Groucho Marx.
- Nine
2005. And I was like, OMG WTF AWESOME!
- Yuvi
Oi
- Geoff Schultz
lol Akiva you make me feel so young...I was writing Hello World when you first hit the net.
- Neal Jansons
from IM
I remember using it in 1993. I was 11 at the time. But I have vague memories of my father using the AOL BBS prior to that. I loved it when I started using it. Having your own computer and a modem is a great relief to an only child, let me tell you.
- Soup
And ofcourse, I was 15 at that time.
- Yuvi
from IM
Neal, I started programming in 1982. Oof.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, you're old! o_O
- Yuvi
from IM
Yuvi, not really. I was really young when I got my first computer.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, I would have been 5. Started programming '87-'88 with BASIC, LOGO, and eventually C.
- Neal Jansons
from IM
80s and newsgroups, I thought that sci.energy.hydrogen was going to change the world.
- Robert Hafer
You were programming 9 years before I was born. That's old! :P How old were you when you started?
- Yuvi
from IM
1976 or '77. A school friend's dad was an astronomer and we used his university account to get on the network. We used to change people's account passwords, download files, etc. We also played games that people had available to others on the network. Nothing truly malicious, just kid jokester stuff. It was a world I'd read about but hadn't yet seen.
- Heather
1995/1996-ish....holy crap! there are nekkid ladies on that internet thang! yowzee!!!!
- Morgan Haley
Hey, the first computer I programed had 8 switches on the front panel for entering bytes. young whippersnappers
- Robert Hafer
Robert, you got on the internet with that? :D :P
- Chrimmus Tad
from fftogo
1991, when I went to college. I thought it was going to be an endless distraction. :)
- Morton Fox
1995, awesome way to get and give information and interact with others around the world.
- xero
1995, when I first went to college. At first I wasn't sure what to do with it.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
1992, university of florida - had to ftp/telnet host to host, then started building it when I got to spain for the USN. God that was fun - thanks for the happy memory jog tad. :-)
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
I was in college, and we could dial into the school's network. I also had an AOL disc. I think my modem was like 9600 baud? Probably 1993-4?
- Derrick
Tad, the most interactive I/O device for that was a Western Union teletype. When I got on a mainframe that supported VT100 terminals, that was something.
- Robert Hafer
1987 - used "med-line" online BBS service @ $50 bucks an hour to conduct medical research for college (that is now a FREE service on the 'net). Also used Lexis-Nexis, CompuServe, and a variety of interesting "chat" services. Mostly research. I learned how to login to various University library ListSrv, gopher, and card catalogs online (using kermit for file tx) - from my green screen...
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- Susan Beebe
Late 80s/early 90s; BBS boards, *Prodigy, then eventually Netcom.
- Pete Delucchi
1997. WOW!
- Steven Perez
Late 1994 in college; remember one prof. very carefully explaining what a 'browser' would look like years later. Most students thought she was crazy.
- Jennifer Dittrich
1989, gopher was the bomb.
- Jason Huebel
Had to be sometime in the late 90's I was at my friend kennys house and he was trying to teach my how to post on a BBS... I was like "Man this sucks! I'm never gonna use this Interanets thing."
- J. Abdul-Qahhar
1989. I finally had something to keep me company.
- Michael McKean
Probably '94... I think that's when CIS turned on Usenet access. Before that, all I knew were BBSs, CIS, and The Well. My first web experience came via GNN... I was a little indifferent at first, but fell in love with if a few weeks later.
- Roger Benningfield
from BuddyFeed
Wait. There's an Internet? Why wasn't informed?
- BEX
1998 or 1999 probably. I was very impressed at the time, although I only started to use it in earnest around early-mid 2000s when I got around to creating a now inaccessible random-pseudonymous e-mail account, discovered the joys of "free" DRM-infested music via a proprietary application for Mac OS 8 from LiquidAudio (RIP), and spent several hours browsing, fighting with streaming radio and trying to download stuff over a fairly expensive dial-up connection that maxed out at 33.something Kbps on a good day.
- Tyson Key
Oh, don't forget Tripod (doubles as an ersatz file sharing system between myself and a friend via FTP), GeoCities (the time I dabbled with HTML) and ICQ...
- Tyson Key
I 1st discovered the internet in 1995 (Worldnet, France). Impressed but continued to use & B SysOp of BBS and french RTC ;)
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
1994. I ended up in a dorm that didn't have Ethernet, so we had to access the campus network through 14.4k modems. Mosaic was unusable at that speed, so we used Lynx. How did we find anything back then, since search engines didn't exist yet?
- Victor Ganata
1994 or so, on the computers in the lab at CSUS. I didn't really get it for a couple years after that.
- Bren -- Not Grinchy
The internet? Well if you count the Usenet, then 1989 with several BBS's that had a connection to the newsgroups. Actual internet with email and everything. PCLink came out sometime in the early 90's. Turned into AOL and the rest is history.
- CW™
Quite late for me... i was already 20, in the late 90's. And i think i was just Napster at the time :)
- diego morelli
I discovered the Internet as it is today in about '97-98 I think, signed up to MSN. I thought it was OK, I think it took a few weeks for me to 'get it'. I used BBS for many years before this though.
- Kol Tregaskes
97 9th grade. Had one classroom with it. Didn't like the prof. Left internet alone mostly until 2000 and had a T1 in dorm.
- Amber, Random Time Lord
My dad got Prodigy in '88 or '89 and I remember finding the bulletin boards and thinking it was SO COOL. I also found an online game that took ages for each screen to load. But we had that briefly so I really remember getting it in '96 when we got AOL and I got all involved in chatting and even met up with a guy! This was when we all had to write down how long we'd been on because you...
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- Lis Miller
Around 95/96 on Uk dial-up and heading to UK University. But the real discovery was coming to the U.S in around 98/99 and suddenly realising pages could load in less than 30 minutes a time...the only bad thing was coming back to the UK and AOL dial-up but once that was gone, it was all plain sailing...
- Absolute Radio
Around 1994-95. I was working in book publishing doing licensing and started reading about the WWW. I thought that there could be a lot of opportunity for book publishers to license their content websites.
- Lisa Kagel
1995. Used it for info and thought of it as an elektronic encyklopedia that spared med the trip to the library.
- Martin Liechti
1995 I was given a laptop at work to take home and sort out some stuff, I noticed it had a modem, plugged in and dialled up. I believe it was Compuserve I only remember seeing photos of Mars. I didn't stay too long because I did not have a clue about how much it was going to cost me. I bought my own PC the following year.
- M F
in 1980 my summer job was working in a computer room for Mohawk Data Sciences. (yes I am old) Was active in BBS's in the early 90's- Actual internet as we know it today - was using Trumpet Winsock in 1995, with Netscape 2.0 - i think....
- Mike Nencetti
It was around 1992 in the University. First it was email, gopher, and later WWW, which we browsed using Mosaic.
- Peter Sedik
1995: A friend an me sat in this internet cafe for hours and browsed the homepages of LucasArts and Sierra to find walkthroughs and announcements of new games.
- Michael Netsch
1990 in the offices of the East-West Center in Honolulu, a friend showed me Usenet over a VT-100 connection. I'd already heard of the Net from Jeffrey Hallett, former president of the Naisbitt Institute, but this was my first chance to see it live.
- Shel Holtz
2001. can't remember, sorry :(
- Timo Heuer
For me it was 1994. I was a SAHM but always interested in new things. I'd heard the word "internet" and wasn't even sure what it was other than it connected computers but somehow I knew I wanted access to it and that it would be important. I had to do a lot of searching and asking around to find anyone who knew where to get service in my area. I went through over $500 in "credits" or hours online in my first 2 months. Been hooked ever since ;)
- Merlene
in 1.994 i was studying architecture and i decided to change my life working with internet
- cpons
1988. It was awfully boring back then, just ftp and email.
- DGentry
I don't really remember my first impressions, as it was back in 1986-1987 and it wasn't that big a deal. I was working for the University of Michigan computer network as a student back at the time--helping out in the computer labs--when UofM connected it's Merit network up with NSFNET from MCI and an IBM network into an "internetworked" system. Later, I vaguely remember using Gopher, IRC, USENET, and remember reading a USENET post from some guy in Switzerland talking about some web of hyperlinked pages...
- Ken Sheppardson
Hard to say. I used Promenade (now AOL) when I got my first PC in 1992. I didn't consider that the Internet though. It felt like a box with closed doors where you were able to explore sites and communicate with friends. In fact, I remember getting a {Netscape?) issued computer in '95 or so with all these websites prefixed by http:// and I threw out the magazine since I thought AOL was...
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- Tamar Weinberg
it was mid 1994. It was slow, boring and expensive...
- Tahir Zaimoglu
1997. I lived at thepark.com. I thought it was awesome to be able to chat with people who didn't know me.
- Bec Rowe @d0tski
circa 1995. High school. "WWWhere have you been all my life?"
- Kamilah Gill
1993-1994 round about. I thought it was amazing but didn't yet see how it would really explode.
- AJ Kohn
1994 - I couldn't believe I could send a letter (email) to my family without any postage. I was writing them a letter weekly and I realized that this would be much easier.
- Travis Murdock
I guess that would be junior high, 1987. I was on the academic decathlon team and our advisor showed us how to research information from a local university's "online" papers. I remember thinking the modem was a hoot...one of those acoustic coupler jobs...but being online irritated me. I preferred going to a library in person. I didn't touch the internet again until 1992-ish. A friend...
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- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
88/89 for me - started thru AOL - still remember my old AOL email address - tombuckob2! They got hooked on the rec.windsurfing newsgroup - where I found my tribe.
- Tom O'Brien
1992/93, right as Mosiac was coming into the picture, but I didn't have it on my PC so it was all text.I thught it was cool but a bit confusing and hard to navigate, but couldn't get enough of it!
- Kelly W.
1994. Was kinda young so it didn't make a huge impression other than a new way to make pen pals and play games.
- Nurse Katie
Circa 1984 with my Commodore 64 and an attached 300 baud modem. I still recall the text scrolling across my screen from my first connection to a BBS. I was impressed.
- J.D. Deutschendorf
after bbs, I remember buying a book full of newsgroups.. didn't see the point at that time.. then we went to Aol :0 should have stuck with the newsgroups ;)
- Tim Hoeck
from AndFeed
1995, my freshman year in college. ESPN online, at any time I want? I'm sold!
- Jason D Barr
1996. "Lynx is not a very good web browser."
- Guan Yang
1999
- Frederick Bvalani
from fftogo
around 1989, I think. I wasn't enough of a geek to truly appreciate it at the time, though I did recognize the potential it had to make the world a much smaller (as in more connected) place.
- vicster needs a nap
About 1992, when I got a Netcom shell account. Had been BBS'ing since '84, so it wasn't utterly foriegn.
- Bob Morris (polizeros)
'91 when I first entered college. And yeah, MUDs took up way, waaaaaay too much of my time at one point.
- ronin
MUD! I use to be all about it
- Shevonne
Mine will be 1991 when I was expose to VAX and Sun's machine. I still remember the good old days of gopher and usenet. And email attachments using uuencode/uudecode. YEAH and MUD too which also took out much of my college time
- Thomas Chai
Probably '92 or '93. Went online through AOL and a 2400 baud modem. Was too slow to be of much use, though, so I stuck with AOL and dialing up local BBSs. Once I upgraded my modem to a 14.4, though, I was able to browse the Web at reasonable speeds and had my mind blown by the sheer mass of information on totally obscure topics that was available online - info that was previously only available in micro-run niche zines.
- Eric Tatro
Late 80's, gopher, usenet, WAIS--"Who's getting all this info together and who's paying them?"--early 90's, Mosaic--"Needs some color and movement. Someone's going to want to put an ad on that."
- S. Charles Balazs
Getting my first out of network SMTP email from my wife who was in Nepal and fiddling around with AOL in the early 90s. Browsers were so clunky then.
- Colin Campbell
1993 (I think). I just enjoyed mailing lists and USENET.
- cecily
Oh, wait - BBSes count? Then my first foray was '92.
- cecily
If BBSs count, my first foray was probably 1983. However I don't think BBSs would count: they were modem-connected islands, not using what is now the Internet.
- DGentry
Yeah, unless the BBS had an Internet gateway. A local WildCat BBS had an NNTP connection around 1988 or so. Before then, they were either independent or linked by FIDOnet (and boy do I miss me some FIDOnet hacking).
- Akiva Moskovitz
around 1995 through AOL disk.
- Kim Landwehr
https://friendfeed.com/akiva...
- Akiva Moskovitz
1994. first intro was irc via an eskimo north shell during lunch @ high school.
- Jason Wyttenbach
it was the summer of 1997. America Online 3.0 to be exact.
- MicahBear78
Dick and I saw Netscape for the first time in late 1994. We signed up with our first ISP, mo.net, in early 1995, and I could have pitched my Maritz client's first web site in spring 1995, but we went to a funeral in VA instead. Later that year I came up pregnant with our son and read Usenet alt.something-or-other.breastfeeding voraciously until Jojo was born - made all the difference...
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- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
It was 1993, on Prodigy.
- Jason Runyan
1993 on a local ISP...all text. loved it!
- (jeff)isageek
1988, dialup to the local .edu, then browse their minerva Library system, emails to others outside my domain, telnetted out to various usenets and ircs and so on and so on, progressing and expanding tyhrough the years ever since. LEGEND OF THE RED DRAGON 4LIFE!
- Tsali, The Native of FF
1991 -- couldn't get my parents to get me a $20/mo Netcom Shell account. It was still years later before I got an Internet connection!
- Garry Tan
1990 - I was consulting for the old DEC and they had a funky connection to the internet but you could get to USENET via a proxy. I loved rec.arts.books and the tech news groups. I thought woaaa, there's a wide world out there.
- Dan Perlman
1999 - Brand new USR 56K Sportster as a gift
- flavio
2000 at the local library in the small country town I lived in. I didn't really know what to do with it, came across as a fast card file. Strangely my school had apples in 83 so was quite computer savvy. I didn't get my own computer till 2007 after backpacking for five years and using cyber cafes.
- Yant
Around 1994 through IRC. Thought it was the greatest thing since swiss cheese. Immediately got sucked into chat. Took my first job designing websites soon after.
- Leigh
1992. And it was awful, but fascinating at the same time. Awful because every command had to be spelled in the right way. No faults allowed. Fascinating because when I typed my own name (was it altavista in those days or was it all the connected university libraries together?) some information appeared! :-)
- Ton Zijp
1993 - I was working for an insurance co and the marketing research person had a dial-up AOL account that she shared with several of us. I was hooked.
- Paul Gibler
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