The Internet allowed me to start a business in the mid-90s. My youngest has lived his intire life in the Internet age, but knowing what life was like without it, I would never want to go back.

subtitle to my paper on the Arpanet in 1976. I was programming one of the early IMPs.

Thanks to reliable, high-speed connectivity, I can work remotely with no need to go to an office.

And the need for business travel is greatly reduced.

that I can be addicted to something with no physical substance.

The ability to talk to a very diverse and dispersed array of people. Eventually, a portion of my income and the ability to not travel to work on days that would require 5 hours of commuting due to snow and people unable to drive in it.

not just my life--everyone's life. Even if one isn't in daily contact with the world via Internet, one can be.

The problem comes with those people who still haven't woken up to this brave new world, and keep trying to cram it down into their little boxed-in minds and habits. And then there are the wolves and vultures, who seek to make a killing with this nifty new power, and the fascists, who want to keep all power to themselves, forever.

The Internet is designed and operated to keep the wolves, vultures and fascists at bay...for the moment. Constant Vigilance is required to keep it that way.

The problem with that is that we are still evolving the mechanisms to deal with it. This is why Salon does regular articles about how the internet is making us stupider, and sometimes they have a point (sometimes they are just technophobia). When you can find out anything without much effort - do you really value the knowledge - and are you really digging through the surface level of facts to get the understanding that lies beneath. In some cases yes, in other cases maybe not so much.

There's also an issue of connections - which is both a good thing and a bad thing. More than previous generations you can self select for people who share your interests no matter how obscure those interests might be. Geek culture discovered this early on- but it's not limited to them anymore - almost any interest is out there, and there are opportunities to find a culture that lines up with your worldview - a group of people who will confirm your biases and beliefs. In many ways this is good; in other ways it can have negative effects. Say for example a group of people who are convinced that girls have no place in their special gamer clubhouse.

Evolution is always messy though.

Bryant

as people around the world who are important to me.

the government framing on 9/11 and the push for war with Iraq.
Then I started learning different views on many other issues. It was such a feeling of freedom.

Living in the midwest, working in a factory and having only a few alternate sources of news, it was a huge, huge wake up.

I tried to find alternates but it seemed like they would be closed down as quickly as they opened.
It was like I woke up in a garden of Eden.

I was also fortunate to be in grad school and did independent studies on business applications for the Internet at the time. I used the old Lynx browser and was fascinated at what I had access to. Not that I'd read all of it. But just because I ciukd.

For our capstone in 96 we wrote a business plan for the university on distance learning. They used many parts of it immediately. It was especially cool with the beginning of Netscape to use the university's T-1 and surf places like MTV. At the same time the professor's son was working on algorithms for compressing and streaming sound and video. "Video on demand" had been a hot topic for many years previously in telecommunications. Speed was always the primary issue. And it was very hard to imagine affordable high speed internet in every home. But I would set up a web server on my home pc with the latest project loaded then access my IP address from school with an agonizingly slow load time while using the university's T-1.

it was clear that many of the things that we wanted to do on the capstone project as well as my independent study required much more than a 14.4k modem.

One interesting thing we considered was, for example if a teacher wanted to post a PowerPoint (a Microsoft product) presentation, how could it be viewed in a Netscape browser. Speed at the time was good enough for a file like that. It didn't take long at all to figure out that above all, Microsoft would never allow anything like that to be done with their products. (For the time being we used FTP.). Later Netscape went bankrupt. And later Microsoft settled the historic lawsuit against them.

It's been a long road and absolutely fascinating to watch. I'm still amazed that I can sit here with my wireless cellular telephone and type this into a browser. Many take that for granted. Especially the kids. I'm still in awe. I often wonder what the technology will be like when my 15 year old granddaughter is my age. It was hard to impossible to imagine now back then. I draw a blank now thinking about that. It's mind boggling.

...and yet catalyzes the desire to aspire toward our greatest hopes and dreams.

- Crazy, huh?



K&R

The ability to see temps and weather conditions all over the globe, it's almost godlike. Mind-blowing at first encounter.

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?brand=wxmap&zoom=11&query=paris+france

of how abstract we're trying to make the world.

We have this idea that if the information is out there, everyone will eventually agree. Yet morals and standards are as relative as they've ever been. If anything, you can see those relative morals and standards a little more clearly, because you can read people's thoughts, from all over the world.

The internet is like anything else, it has both upsides and downsides. It's made distance irrelevant in some ways, but at the same time it's also increased distance in other ways. All information is at the tip of your fingers, but now your job can easily be done pretty much anywhere.

The first time I signed up online was through a university provider. When that modem started squawking I thought something was broken so I phoned and I am sure they laughed their asses off, also sure that wasn't the first time they got that call. I was soooooo excited to be on the internet, like you say it was the biggest library and chat room in the world! I used to squeal with delight to my friends and family how great it was, mostly to eye rolls and snorts because they didn't know what I was talking about, but I didn't care. Downside: some of those AOL (yeh, I know but I didn't know then) bills were huge. I still feel embarassed about that but never told anyone!

I have changed many views to more liberal and I have improved on my writing skills a whole lot, I don't show it here on DU much tho. I mostly argued with rightwingers in those days of Usenet (?) and the only thing I got out of it was not to waste my time with that any more.

Sometimes two people just DISAGREE and nothing you can say will change that fact. My opinion.

as a small, indy bookseller....people could buy books on Amazon cheaper than I could sell them, even with a tiny mark-up.

It's actually made me aware of how to let much of it go and to look forward to new experiences, new memories.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

I think it has opened the world to a lot of people, but I also think it has given a really scary part of our society an anonymous voice to say some really awful things.

It enables all of us to access so much more information, but I really miss the library, sorry I do. I miss going into the stacks and looking for a book that will answer my questions. Getting things immediately just feeds on societies need for an immediate gratification fix. Things that are immediate are not always the best things, nor are the accurate.

Almost every day I see a post here and elsewhere with a link to something that will "justify" their argument and find it not reliable. It is not just the right wing who do this, we all do. I have been guilty of posting something I got from what I thought was a reliable website only to find it was way off base. Once it is out there it becomes legend, and truth to many people.

Privacy issues are another thing altogether, nothing is private anymore with facebook, twitter, instagram all of those things. I see young people, and some older ones, post some things that make me cringe wondering where they might end up, or how it could hurt them.

While I enjoy connecting with people online, I also find it odd to exchange ideas with people who don't know me, don't know my history and will deny some of it as false without knowing me. Not just this site but others as well.

used to be so clean that a realtor once told prospective buyers they could eat off the floor.

Now that I have a computer, my house looks as if people do.

I have a wider circle of friends and you can form solid friendships on the internet. Some of the people I count among my closest friends I'll never meet face to face in this lifetime.

I have access to libraries I would never be able to travel to which is really important since our village does not have a library. Heck, we barely have snow removal. I get to see museum exhibitions and learn about the broad sweep of history. I can peer into an archeological dig and examine the artifacts.

I love cybertourism. You can peer into a volcano or fly with an eagle or visit the great monuments of any culture. You can swim through swamp water or in the seas. You can dance in Rio or by a campfire in a remote village somewhere. You can hear other languages spoken and sung. You get a feel for what other cultures find important. I really have gotten to the point that I cannot bear our homogenated pop culture. It grates.

I can learn about the advancements in medicine from the microscopic level to the bedside care level. I can watch applications of science in the real world.

I can learn ways to improve my own life by being presented by ideas for DYI projects or better gardening skills or new recipes.

I can explore space and be an armchair astronomer. Getting to see Rosetta land on the comet was a priceless gift to mankind, but the idea that this event so far away in space could be viewed by anyone with a tablet and a battery charger anywhere in the world is just as breathtaking.

I get to share my viewpoint with people here and abroad. I will not always agree and I keep it clean and polite. Very rarely do I speak to someone in a manner that would be at odds with communicating with them face to face.

I like that the internet has opened the world and yet so many times the worst of human nature slithers across the screen. I hate the gossipy nature of information sometimes and that people choose to step over boundaries that they might not breach in every day life. I do, however, wonder the dissolution of personal cyberboundaries isn't contributing to a similar erosion in the real world.

That was the important one.

I wish you a very happy marriage.

He worked there back in the day.

TI Invaders is a video game designed in 1981 exclusively for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer. The game is essentially a Space Invaders clone. It was the top-selling computer game for the TI-99/4A through at least 1982 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A

Someone wrote messageboard software for it where you could connect, read news, chat & share files. This was about the same time Jobs had played around with his 'game computer' and was building an empire with Apple?

The internet used to be a lot more 'free', it was awesome to chat and game with people from around the world.

I think the entire world would be in a better state if we could force a free global internet and not have Govs cut people off global communication.

and we all walk around with these phones that are also far more powerful than that computer.

I actually think about your question often. I first touched a computer at my first job, when someone had one of the small Macs and used it to play games and draw pictures - probably back in the mid 1980s. But a computer wasn't an essential part of my job until later on, perhaps 1991 - when we used it mostly for email. I do remember using the web crawler, and Netscape, and realizing what a huge world it opened, as well as potential time waster!

I don't remember the date of our first home computer, but it was certainly mid 1990s, a big Gateway tower.

But to your question - it makes me more impatient to find out what I want to find out. More interested in keeping up with my email. It keeps me up later at night because I love to browse and listen to music.

It certainly took away the joy of going to the record shop - in parallel with the changes in format and technology (I've gotten to go from big fat hard 78s to LPs to 8 track to cassette to CD to iPod to using Spotify and Pandora on my phone and blue tooth streaming to a speaker. It took away the misery of having to go out to shop in crowds - we don't shop much, but on line is the way to go! And of course, it allows us to actually use our TV for watching movies (since we rarely if ever use it as a TV)

It changed our cooking - instead of writing things on cards, I have recipes bookmarked on my phone and just take it into the kitchen with me. It allows me to not worry when my wife is running late, because I can see where she is on a map. It allows my daughter and I to collaborate on my writing, share comments on texts and documents.

Of course, telecommuting make it possible for me to spend more time where I love - at home - but also to do good work from coffee shops when I feel like getting out. It made it possible for face to face communication with my daughter when she was in Madagascar in the Peace Corps. It is changing how I am able to do pre-book release publicity. It allows me to answer questions from other gardeners.

It of course has allowed me to get much more politically aware - and, unfortunately, much more angry to see how things are going.

These and likely many other things - it truly has been a paradigm shifter!

Good post!

I save on postage by letting the bank mail out the payments. And I can pay at most of the Web sites.

that you have.

The biggest way the Internet has changed my life is that it allowed me to literally change my life. I worked at manual labor and construction from a construction site cleaner to a union tradesman working on massive projects. My body took one hell of a beating in the 25 years of my career. I could not see myself continuing in the construction trade until retirement so I learned how to make a living from home using the Internet. After 5 years I'm doing rather well and my future is secured - as long as the Internet remains free and cost-effective. If we lose Net Neutrality, my future will be in serious jeopardy as my business will not be able to compete with Big Money.

made it highly desirable for the masses. I recall well driving along one day with one of my friends in Silicon Valley discussing how Java would change the face of communications for the masses. Our company developed Java and had just released it.

I had been on a huge intranet at DEC starting about 1992, and as the company had 120,000 employees around the world, it had lots of busy and smart forums.

After I left DEC, I had the addiction, got an account with Netcom .... unix newsreaders like tin and pine.

all keyboard commands. I discovered Usenet, and found lots of forums to argue lots of things.

There was no pictures or graphics in the beginning. Only ASCII art, some of which was very funny.

My future wife informed me about Mosaic, which was just starting up. We shared the early addiction.

remember using Mosaic when it was first released. I was excited about the possibility of a more graphic Internet at the time and had already been on the ASCII versions of the net and on Usenet for some time before Mosaic.

about it. 1992 marked a huge change in my life and I don't recall having discovered the Internet before that.

I can easily keep in touch with my kids 1,000 miles away. I have made friends with THEIR friends and others with similar interests across the country on FB.

I have been on DU for 10 years, and again, get my news from here and can share similar political views. I can even go on Republican (nameless) sites and see what they are thinking too. Less irritating than Faux.

I book airline and hotels online. I also do my Holiday shopping online in my pj's late at night. lol

Yes, as a Senior who remembers the old days, the Net is a LOT better.

I was amazed! Now, meh, big deal lol

That was how I first got started using the Net. Long time before Ancestry! Met a lot of people overseas who gave advice for their country, and met long lost family members too!

The ability to find out almost everything about almost anything is astounding. Let's face it, with computers in our pockets (smartphones) bar bets don't go unsettled any more!

Beyond that, I've found an ability to connect that I've never imagined possible before the Internet. My former wife and I had several foreign exchange students from 1997-2001, and I managed to find one of them a few years ago, and she moved to the US. We've been able to renew our relationship, and I still enjoy showing her (and her new husband) all kinds of things in this country, just like I did when she was fresh off of the airplane in 2000 from Ukraine.

I moved to the East Coast nearly eight years ago, based on meeting a great lady online (yes, she's still putting up with me ) and I can still find what I need to live a Northwest lifestyle with Portland ales, Columbia Valley wines, and Seahawk gear!

We are too immersed in the midst of what we have to truly appreciate the changes that the Internet has made in daily life, but future generations will be able to see it clearly with 20-20 hindsight. However, it's good to stop and reflect on it, and your post provided that opportunity, thanks!

As for me, I was always tired of that old question: "ASL?"

-online dating, which has helped me to meet women since I'm shy.
-YouTube, giving me a ton of videos to watch when I can't find anything worth watching on TV.
-WorldStarHipHop (same as YouTube).
-DU, giving me a (somewhat) sanctuary from wingnuts on other sites and on TV.
-iTunes, which has allowed me to keep hundreds of my favorite songs in my pocket wherever I go.
-LeechBlock, which has minimized my online distractions as I try to focus on schoolwork and chores.
-StumbleUpon. 'Nuff said.

In that order.

I've spent 1000s of hours using my personal computer over the past several years, and those are the 3 biggest things that I can think of that have changed my life ever since the advent of the World Wide Web.
Thanks to the vision of Al Gore, and many other members of the Democratic party, who all made it possible.

What happened was, one sunny day very early in the spring season, clear back in 1995, while I was in total bliss working at a shitty job, completely unaware of the technological revolution that was about to come, I met an overweight, very friendly guy who was about 30 years old, and who was very much in to personal computers.
He was a total geek, and very proud of it.

He was such a huge geek that the personalized license plate that he had on his older torn up Dodge Caravan was "WWW".
So, one day I asked him about his license plate, what it meant, and he rambled non-stop for 10 minutes without taking a breath.
That's a little exaggerated, but it seemed that way to me, anyway.

I had never met anyone over the age of 8 years old who was that excited about anything.
And yet, all he could talk about, besides his undying love for Diet Pepsi, was the coming launch date for the World Wide Web.
I didn't even know about it, so I was kind of surprised that he was so totally excited over it.

Oh, and I should also include pictures.
Pictures of everything I ever wanted to see . . pictures of the stars, pictures from the depths of the oceans, pictures of wild animals, pictures of people from different countries, and old pictures from history.