Ask HN: What was your first impression of the Internet?
For those of us that remember living daily life before the internet, what was your first impression of it? And why did you keep going back to use it?
My first glimpse of it was through AOL, and it seemed like a not-so-useful novelty. An advertisement on the television would say "find us online with AOL keyword ____" and you could read a page with more information about their products, or maybe play a silly game related to their products.
I do clearly remember being blown away when I realized that, after establishing the dial-up connection, I could click on the "Internet Explorer" icon and use Yahoo or Lycos instead of going through AOL, and find seemingly anything in the wild west of the Internet outside of AOL's walled garden. That's when I became fascinated with it as a portal to another world. Like many others on HN have said before, it's sad to me that newcomers (kids or old folks) today seem to be increasingly getting only the walled garden experience again.
I missed the AOL train, but I remember my cousins being into it when I'd visit them in "the city" (the also had cable television). I don't think we had a computer at my dad's house until Windows Me when I was nearing high school age.
I know my mom on the other-hand was rocking dial-up for email and browsing on a Windows 95/98? machine. But as things went, I spent a majority of time at dad's.
It was pretty cool to be able to connect to systems all over the world. I remember PowWow, one of the early chat systems, and I chatted with a guy in Novosibirsk and was just amazed!
I showed it to a friend of mine, and he was underwhelmed to say the least. This was before the rules were changed, and commercial content was allowed.
A few years later, I was the sysadmin of our local dialup internet provider, with about 200 users. That was fun. I wrote the Windows 3.1 installer disks, which installed Trumpet Winsock and Mosaic if I recall correctly. We had about 50 modems hooked to 16 port serial boards. The new owner who bought it upgraded it to a US Robotics digital connection and supported 53k downloads.
A few years after that, cable internet became available, and I haven't looked back.
My friend who was "meh" about the internet now as $40/month gigabit fiber. I'm stuck with $100/month 100 Mbps cable.
Netscape navigator was pretty soon after that and I downloaded a lot of freeware chess and checkers programs. I would also look up game faqs and reviews.
It was basically a magic portal to new software and information, mostly so I could game more.
Oh I miss. THOSE days..:D.
Seemed like an infinite amount of exploring could be done even back then so I guess that was the drive to continue using it.
The internet just made sense to me.