I agree. Where I grew up local calls were metered. Hence no real BBS culture, and not much in the way of modems. When I got the Internet at university in 1990,

I agree. Where I grew up local calls were metered. Hence no real BBS culture, and not much in the way of modems. When I got the Internet at university in 1990, ftp was a revelation. Downloading files from anywhere and everywhere was insanely empowering. I remember downloading files on hard-drive (MFM) settings to use old hard drives with my salvaged controller cards. It's hard to convey how "hands on" computing was back then. Lots of jumpers to set, lots of hardware, and software, things to set to make it "work just right". Lots of trial and error, but really cool when it worked! Now i just buy any old USB thing, plug it it, and off we go. I confess I prefer the present, these days I'm using the computer to do things, not "make the computer actually work."