Online: Remember Your Very First Time? | Hacker News Reader

Online: Remember Your Very First Time?

thenextweb.org

3 pointsthenextweb6 comments

Do you remember the very first time you went online. How did it feel? What did you do? How did it change your life?

I played around with my Uncle's Prodigy account a little, and I had a buddy at college who had what he called a "PINE account" (shell access, but he only ran PINE) that I poked at a little...but I still remember my first time really getting on the net.

A friend at church had a pamphlet from CRL.com (an ISP at the time...not sure if the current site is in any way related)

I signed up, got my account (shroom@crl.com) and then thought, "Well now what?" Had to learn about telnet access and head down to the computer lab at Ga State, because I didn't have a modem that worked.

Looking back, it's amazing how quickly I went from acronym overload to understanding the technology underneath the services. It was such an awesome time. I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Forgetting the actual technology side of it (DOS, KA9Q and PINE for me), the biggest thing we (me and my dad) both thought when we first started to play with the net was: "You can download and do multiple things at the same time? How does THAT work?" We were, of course, used to regular BBSes..

Had a commodore 64 when I was 5. When I was 10 I got some computer for free from some law firm that only ran on floppies. Of course that was the same time when my dad got a new computer with a whopping 1 gig hard drive.

1993 - went to an "Internet demonstration" in downtown Wellington, New Zealand. Mostly Gopher and Usenet how-tos. Didn't get what the fuss was about, went back to BBSes for the next 2 years.

I remember BBSes pretty clearly; I can't actually remember the first time I got on the Internet

i was 8 and i just looked at pictures of cars and stuff. That was not my pc, i got internet at home years after that. The net changed my life after i was 14 and discovered what a web forum was.

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