Yesterday I had a nostalgic thought: a flashback to my first conversation on the internet. I actually remembered the name and profession of the guy, looked him up and found him on linked-in. Continuing to think about technology and its future, I've put together a list of my internet turning points.
~1994. I've been playing games like "Doom" on my 486 gateway PC. We keep getting Compuserve discs in the mail. I decide to buy one of those "modem" things at Wal-Mart for $50. After some trial and error, my big brother and I manage to log on and find a chat option. Randomly we're paired with a man named Barry. He works at Coca-Cola. If you're over 25, I don't have to explain the thrill of your first electric conversation with a stranger. Also one of the funniest, unique conversations I can remember. The phone bill was about $300 that month - oops.
Now it's 1996. I like chatting with people on sites like "Talk City." A lot of this conversation revolves around arguments and insulting others. The first web-related commercial I ever saw was for "Talk City" during the Seinfeld Finale. On a whim I don't remember, I download a program called ICQ. I am one of three registered users in my town. In less than a year, every kid in our school from 14-18 will have an account. Suddenly, talking to strangers in faraway places seems mundane and pointless.
August 31st, 1997. I'm in an mIRC chatroom on DALnet, learning how to pirate. Suddenly the chatrooms flood with panicked messages: Lady Di has been in a car accident and is likely dead. I've heard about this story as it happened, instead of hours or days later. The implications for this new "word of mouth" are overwhelming.
Fall 1999. My friend and music buddy comes to school ecstatic. "My dad found this thing on the internet called 'Napster'; you can download a whole song in under 20 minutes as an 'M-P-3.' By April 2000, Metallica threatened to sue me and had my account suspended, all because I searched for "Master of Puppets" a few days prior. Didn't download, just searched. I have never and will never forgive them.
September 11,2001. This doesn't have anything to do with the internet, but I'm telling it. I'm sleeping on the couch, had to work the night before. I let the phone ring through to the answering machine and listen to the message: "I don't know if you've heard or not, but terrorists just took out half of New York City." I roll over; it can't be that big a deal.
2005. I'm thinking of a recipe I made for German Club back in high school - Frankfurter Nudelpfenne. That doesn't yield any Google Results, so I throw a Hail Mary and search for the only three ingredients I remember, "peas, carrots, hot dogs." These three seemingly random words not only yield the recipe on the first result, but a version posted by a woman who'd had the same German teacher, 25 years earlier. Small internet.
January 15, 2009. 3:26 PM. A plane leaves La Guardia airport only to crash land into the Hudson river. By 3:40 PM, it's all over Twitter, complete with rescue pictures. I get to watch it unfold in real-time. Suddenly it's cool to be connected and talking with people you don't know again.
There are lots of points to be drawn out here. Also, a few things I left out, like the first time I used Google, or the results the first time I searched for myself. We'll leave a little something to the imagination. Do you have any "key" internet memories?
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