Sept. 25, 1994, is the postmark on a postcard I received from a friend in San Jose, Calif., in which she announced that she was "finally on the Info Superhighway" and revealed her email address, AOL handle and expectations to be slow in returning correspondence.
"I can't afford to use my service more than twice a week, so please be patient if it takes a while for me to get your message," she warned.
For the moment, I'm considering this date to be start of the rank-and-file, popular, common person's Internet--not the pilot model the early adopters glommed on to while the rest of her were still occupied with Crystal Quest.
Well Mosaic was first released in early 1993. I got my first glimpse of it in early 1994 in the UK Chemistry library. I knew immediately that all that time I had spent learning and teaching Gopher had been a complete waste of time.
ReplyDeleteI never went with AOL, I was a Prodigy user.
I forget what the name of my first ISP was. It was when I was living in Washington, and, honestly, the name was something along the lines of "InterSlice" or "EdgeCom." "NetSomething," maybe. "ComWorld" ...?
ReplyDeleteI signed onto AOL in the spring of 1995, mainly because I wanted to keep track of the English Premier League, and you couldn't get the standings over here.
ReplyDeleteI got Internet access at my desk at work before I got it at home, and the first thing I looked up when I decided I wouldn't get fired for doing non-work stuff on my computer was Sun Belt Conference women's basketball standings and stats. It was awesome. I pretty much lost that whole day trying to find stuff on all of the conferences. It was amazing.
ReplyDeleteStill is, actually.