I'm 36, just old enough to remember not having Internet access at home; also just old enough to remember hearing the term "information superhighway" and failing to imagine what that meant.

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.