4 ms·

Running from school in 1994 straight to my local library to beat the rush for a 30 minute allotment of “the internet” on a crappy computer. But it blew my mind,

Running from school in 1994 straight to my local library to beat the rush for a 30 minute allotment of “the internet” on a crappy computer. But it blew my mind, I loved every byte. When I discovered I could download and print guitar tablature others had transcribed, I was in awe. When I discovered I could save images of my favourite bands to a floppy disk, it was magic. And finally when I realised that I too could build websites using HTML… I’m just glad I grew upon that era, and I could build a career, and a life out of something I love.

cube00 3y ago
How I dodged getting a virus downloading on the shared library computers and bringing those floppies home I'll never know. We only had 8 hours a month of dial up so I still had to frequent the library to get my fix. We also had to carefully consider when we would dial in because that was 25 cents a pop for the phone call. Hours spent writing and read mail and newsgroups offline and one "send and receive" when you were online to save those precious hours.
- mnahkies 3y ago
  We were fortunate enough to have unlimited hours, but living remotely enough to not get broadband until ~2010. Fond memories of downloading Linux Isos and the like from 10pm-7am over the course of weeks/months trying not to tie up the phone line too much. Getting access to a university's connection was a revelation and many a CDs were burnt of random stuff whilst being amazed that a month long endeavour could be done in minutes
  - cube00 3y ago
    I did high school work experience at a university and they were kind enough to give me a Red Hat Linux CD to install at home along with a full printed manual for it. There began the awaking to a whole new world beyond DOS and Windows that I never would have had on dial up.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    At some point, Bell Canada had a $5/month service called "Internet Call Display", so you had an app that popped up on your computer when there was an incoming call and who it was. You could also set it to auto-disconnect for any in-coming call. With that, I started logging many hundreds of hours a month on dialup...
- stevekemp 3y ago
  I remember similar things in the UK, having to pay both a monthly subscription price and a per-minute fee to access the internet. When I got a broadband connection in the mid nineties it was a double win - no longer did I have to pay by the minute, and when I was online I could still make and receive phone-calls from my landline. (I sometimes feel nostalgic when watching films in which early dialup was featured, hearing the sound of the modem negotiating it's almost immediately obvious what their baud rate was set to 28.8k or the 56k!)
vjk800 3y ago
It's weird how all that stuff and much more is still available now, but no-one is in awe anymore. Of course the same could be said of the pre-internet modern era compared to, say the 1700th century. I guess human mind really is sensitive only to changes and not to absolute state of things. Makes me wonder how much point there really is in continuously making newer and shinier things since the only thing that happens is that people just get used to the new things and are approximately as happy as they were before.
- cube00 3y ago
  Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.
- bloomingeek 3y ago
  This is a great observation and fact! I believe paradigm shifts are almost always missed by the masses. Right now we are in a digital revolution that has morphed into a social media shift. Hardware is too fast for most software, but when it catches up, the results could be mountainous. I'm a senior citizen now who wishes the next paradigm, whatever it will be (Ai?), will happen so I can see it. As for me, happiness is what you make of it, if I want to be happy I have to work for it. When life sucks, I work back to happiness.
  - jamal-kumar 3y ago
    For what it's worth it seems alot of younger people I know are are pretty much mortified about what you're excited about. Aspiring artists or writers who are out of jobs and stuff like that. Anyone I've met this year who is working in the film industry, for another example...
    - ACow_Adonis 3y ago
      it is hard to convey to people how much of our modern world are cultural beliefs and how much it's shifted. So much is commerce and IP now. it's horrible. I openly gave a talk in my primary school pre-1992 (when we moved) about overcoming copy protections. no one thought i was doing anything wrong. I believe i connected to the internet from our home in AUS sometime around 1994 (when we moved again) or earlier. I can time it because a mortified little me had to find a way to dispose of a picture of a topless lady i accidentally printed out and i rode all the way down to the local shops to throw out in the bin before we moved. I never realised how cutting edge my father was to get us a home connection at the time. But anyway i digress. back then it was HOPE that this technology would result in free sharing of art and knowledge that everyone wanted to place online at their own expense. Now it's fear that it will cut people out of commercialisation. Such a depressing dystopia we live in, and such a horrible shift as the Web (and subsequently all our societies) were gradually taken over by commercial culture :( i can't overstress how important that early internet connection was to me as a child growing up in Australia...

cube00 3y ago

How I dodged getting a virus downloading on the shared library computers and bringing those floppies home I'll never know. We only had 8 hours a month of dial up so I still had to frequent the library to get my fix. We also had to carefully consider when we would dial in because that was 25 cents a pop for the phone call. Hours spent writing and read mail and newsgroups offline and one "send and receive" when you were online to save those precious hours.

mnahkies 3y ago
We were fortunate enough to have unlimited hours, but living remotely enough to not get broadband until ~2010. Fond memories of downloading Linux Isos and the like from 10pm-7am over the course of weeks/months trying not to tie up the phone line too much. Getting access to a university's connection was a revelation and many a CDs were burnt of random stuff whilst being amazed that a month long endeavour could be done in minutes
- cube00 3y ago
  I did high school work experience at a university and they were kind enough to give me a Red Hat Linux CD to install at home along with a full printed manual for it. There began the awaking to a whole new world beyond DOS and Windows that I never would have had on dial up.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  At some point, Bell Canada had a $5/month service called "Internet Call Display", so you had an app that popped up on your computer when there was an incoming call and who it was. You could also set it to auto-disconnect for any in-coming call. With that, I started logging many hundreds of hours a month on dialup...
stevekemp 3y ago
I remember similar things in the UK, having to pay both a monthly subscription price and a per-minute fee to access the internet. When I got a broadband connection in the mid nineties it was a double win - no longer did I have to pay by the minute, and when I was online I could still make and receive phone-calls from my landline. (I sometimes feel nostalgic when watching films in which early dialup was featured, hearing the sound of the modem negotiating it's almost immediately obvious what their baud rate was set to 28.8k or the 56k!)

vjk800 3y ago

It's weird how all that stuff and much more is still available now, but no-one is in awe anymore. Of course the same could be said of the pre-internet modern era compared to, say the 1700th century. I guess human mind really is sensitive only to changes and not to absolute state of things. Makes me wonder how much point there really is in continuously making newer and shinier things since the only thing that happens is that people just get used to the new things and are approximately as happy as they were before.

cube00 3y ago
Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.
bloomingeek 3y ago
This is a great observation and fact! I believe paradigm shifts are almost always missed by the masses. Right now we are in a digital revolution that has morphed into a social media shift. Hardware is too fast for most software, but when it catches up, the results could be mountainous. I'm a senior citizen now who wishes the next paradigm, whatever it will be (Ai?), will happen so I can see it. As for me, happiness is what you make of it, if I want to be happy I have to work for it. When life sucks, I work back to happiness.
- jamal-kumar 3y ago
  For what it's worth it seems alot of younger people I know are are pretty much mortified about what you're excited about. Aspiring artists or writers who are out of jobs and stuff like that. Anyone I've met this year who is working in the film industry, for another example...
  - ACow_Adonis 3y ago
    it is hard to convey to people how much of our modern world are cultural beliefs and how much it's shifted. So much is commerce and IP now. it's horrible. I openly gave a talk in my primary school pre-1992 (when we moved) about overcoming copy protections. no one thought i was doing anything wrong. I believe i connected to the internet from our home in AUS sometime around 1994 (when we moved again) or earlier. I can time it because a mortified little me had to find a way to dispose of a picture of a topless lady i accidentally printed out and i rode all the way down to the local shops to throw out in the bin before we moved. I never realised how cutting edge my father was to get us a home connection at the time. But anyway i digress. back then it was HOPE that this technology would result in free sharing of art and knowledge that everyone wanted to place online at their own expense. Now it's fear that it will cut people out of commercialisation. Such a depressing dystopia we live in, and such a horrible shift as the Web (and subsequently all our societies) were gradually taken over by commercial culture :( i can't overstress how important that early internet connection was to me as a child growing up in Australia...