I’m new to the internet. Only got access to it 3 years ago. Didn’t own a smartphone until last year. I’m curious how it was for people who discovered it earlier.
I’m new to the internet. Only got access to it 3 years ago. Didn’t own a smartphone until last year. I’m curious how it was for people who discovered it earlier.
Early '90’s. At first only the government and universities had access to the internet, before the www/world wide web existed. I went to a university before the general public had access via ISPs (which were just dial-up for a long time), so I could get onto it. At first there were just things like Archie and gopher, and a text email thing (pine, I think it was).
When dial-up became available to the general public, very few people used it at first. I used Compuserve for a while with a 300 baud modem where you could read the text as it slowly came across. But very quickly AOL started up and sent out millions of CDs so more and more people signed up on that–I never used AOL, though. Once I had dial-up at home I used IRC to chat online. That was in the mid 90’s. Good times.
This is my experience as well. I remember moving from a 28K to a 56K modem was a big deal! Then my dad upgraded us to cable and hoooooooooooly shit!