Guess it was early 90s. At work, we could use FTP on our huge powerful work stations (at an electronics company) to connect to computers at universities in the US.
Managed to access one, did I go looking for porn or technical papers or try to meet people? No the first thing I did was download REM lyrics that somebody had conveniently typed into a file. So exciting.
What was your first experience of the modern world like?
At work there was one computer in the library with an internet connection. In my lunchbreak one day, after the screech-chug of the modem connecting, I typed in the URL for Mixmaster Morris’s website. It took about ten minutes to open a page with a full colour picture of the ambient house DJ, with the image appearing in widely-separated thin lines that were very gradually filled in as the screen refreshed.
I looked around me at the leather-bound tomes of linen and vellum and wondered about this brave new world we were entering.
“It’s not all that, is it?”
Snap!, REM lyrics was among the first things I did, I was absolutely obssessed with the quality of their first 5 IRS CDs, and Chronic Town, upon buying them in 2000 – I recall they dominated my listening that year and I played little else. LRP in particular, I absoluely caned that record.
Also going to Napster (I confess) to download the new REM cd Reveal for free and Radiohead’s Amnesiac.
This will date stamp my entree on the internet to May 2001. Via a super slow BT dial-up connection.
It really was, does this even need to be said, (?) life changing: nowt would ever be the same again.
I now own Reveal on CD but never did purchase a legal copy of Amnesiac FWIW.
But I worshipped, and still do, the mighty Pyramid Song.
Other REM tunes that had never been released or were extremely difficult to come across were made easy via napster, to name three Fascinating from the Reveal sessions and rejected for canonical release, Photograph – a collab with Natalie Merchant and their super cover of Only in America, the latter used in Michael Moore’s prerceptive crack at a narrative movie 1995s “Canadian Bacon”.
In tandem, I remember checking all the archived reviews on Q mag’s website “Q4music”, an equally excellent resource, Mojo’s was mojo4music.
I was working for a bespoke tour operator at the time, offering product around the world. I do remember the first thing I did was have a look at our own website, which was essentially a slimmed down version of our physical brochure. I just remember it loading painfully slowly and that the colour resolution was appalling. But without doubt, the Internet quickly transformed things, making contact with destinations in various time zones so much easier. That said, by now, I should think it has further transformed the business out of existence.
Probably that time I contacted that bloke and then had him over and ate him.
Oh, I thought you said “what’s the worst thing you’ve done on the internet?”
Mid 1980’s (86? no later than 87) we had a research collaborator in New Zealand. We were just thrilled that we could use JANET (Joint Academic Network) to send and receive text messages rather than post letters. And the messages actually got through most of the time.
The computer we were using for research was a DEC PDP11/40. Only slightly better than an abacus.
The pizza sized disks could hold a whole 700k of data. K. Not M. Not G. K.
Zoom forward 10 years (see what I did there?) I used to take part in a USA/UK/Japan teleconference. Special cameras, dedicated room, dedicated lines etc. Now we could do it on our phones. This past week I’ve video called my daughter in Turin and wife in Gran Canaria. (I physically met my son in London in case you think they were all running away from me).
We live in a Science Fiction world.
Can’t say for certain, but I know one of the earliest things I did was access an unfilmed Aliens script (I think this was before the third film was made. I remember being in a Fatima Mansions alt.newsgroup and a Nick Cave one too.
Probably William Gibson’s Alien III script, which though never filmed has had a strong second life as a script, novel, comic and audiobook.
Not bad for an un-used film script.
(and IMHO better the actual film – though many disagree).
The Aliens unfilmed script I most enjoyed reading was the one on a wooden planet populated by monks.
In 1995, we bought our first Mac – at a computer show at Ally Pally, bizarrely. Before that submitting copy for my regular Bookseller columnist gig required me to print it out on the Amstrad and go to Muswell Hill to fax it. At the time Apple used a town square metaphor. The screech of the modem would land you there and you had a choice of going to the library for information, the store for goods and so on. It all seemed like magic.
Secretary says “Your computer is here, I’ve switched it on”.
Spent the next six hours chasing this mouse thingy across the screen. Somehow eventually found Ohio State University which helpfully informed me I could access their entire library using this handy 235 digit code and my imaginary degree in Cobalt
Informed secretary “This whatchamacallit will never catch on, where’s my quill gone?”
It took me the best part of a week to get fully online with my Apple LCII and my 14.4k US Robotics modem and that was with the assistance of my mate, who was a proper early adopter. The first thing I can remember doing was downloading a whole lot of guitar tab from, I think, OLGA.
I was also a keen online record shopper, combing through usenet listings and the first early web stores, which were themselves really just great big lists. Back then, of course, no one took credit cards or anything like that so you just had to pop a bundle of US dollars in an envelope and hope for the best. Amazingly, over god knows how many purchases, nothing ever went missing in the post.
Among my father’s faults was his self-importance. So, I recall, the first thing he Googled was….himself. Only, the first result he clicked turned out to be a porn site (well, he was called Roger). Security being what it was, this site immediately managed to divert his dialup connection through a premium rate number. Fabulous instant karma.
I think this thread is a weak attempt at entrapment…as if?
The first time I remember encountering the internet that I can recall was visiting a technical genius friend of mine in Silicon Valley. I think he was working for Apple at the time. This would’ve been some time in the mid 90s I think. We visited a friend of his who was working for a young company called Yahoo as I recall. I think we were going to a gig by the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Anyway she was involved with developing a search engine and, as we were Irish, she asked us how she should categorise rosary beads. I think we settled on Religious Paraphernalia as our best guess. This might be a completely unreliable memory and maybe we all had home internet at that stage but I think that was the first time I encountered it. She also had a headless Steinberg bass, the first time I encountered one of them too.
I think it would have been around the start of 1994 when I opened a Compuserve account. The hope was that it would make it easy to buy CDs direct from the US. I never did that with Compuserve but by early 1995, Compuserve had a gateway to the WWW which I embraced straight away. By huge coincidence, I’m sure one of the first things I did was to download some REM tabs. Back then, with a 14000 bps modem, text was the order of the day. I didn’t realise then that before the end of 95, my girlfriend and I would have set up and opened our own Internet cafe with a ‘top of the range’ 64Mbps leased line.
The first thing I did was type in White House, as it was the time of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal – so some time in 1995. And wouldn’t you know it – it was a porn site. (no longer, I just checked it goes straight to the actual White House official site).
Next thing I typed in was Frank Zappa, can’t remember exactly what I found but there was a lot there.
Then it occurred to me to type in my own name, and found a whole lot of references to film scores.
Joe Ely was a very early adopter ( think his early 90s albums usually carried a “Got a modem? Call this number 0xxxxxxxxx, etc.)
So when I was faced for the first time with the “super net highway”, around 1998, I thought I “I’m sure Joe Ely is out there “ and he was…just very slowly.
I think 6 months later I was booking holidays online!
Looked for funny videos of cats.
When I was unable to find any, I joined an AOL group made up of strange
People coming up with increasingly outlandish theories for this sinister
Shortfall.
I bought my first PC when I moved to Singapore in 1993 and was probably connected to the internet (via a 14.4k modem ?) at that point, but can’t remember anything specific.
I do remember downloading the shareware version of DOOM over the modem (and it invariably crapping out at 95% downloaded) but that would have been 1994 I think.
My Dad was a uni professor, so had email from the late 80s or so (maybe earlier?). I remember him telling me about the internet, and me going into his office in my first year or two of being in the workforce, so late 1994 or so. On a whim, the first thing I searched for was info about the band Funkadelic. I spent an hour reading the pink and lime green on black text and left with my head spinning. Within 6 months it was ubiquitous and I was ordering CDs online.
I didn’t get a computer until post-Millenium panic (which I only encountered at work, having “consultants” coming to fiddle with our one computer for days), and even then it wasn’t my idea.
For some reason it never occured to me that it would be a good idea to have one, probably because the only computer I’d encountered was at work, and only the boss used it at that time.
But then I was offered an old computer for free, only problem was that it broke down when I’d signed up for internet connection…got another one cheap second hand, but something was faulty with that one as well. I spent a month trying to get my internet provider to get me hooked up to the net, but nothing worked and they didn’t understand why.
I gave up, cancelled the internet and spent a year or so only using the computer to play Sims 1…until I had the money to buy a new, working computer and managed to get connected, at last. I’ve no idea what the first thing I did was. I probably just sent emails to everyone I knew, but the first site? No idea.
I don’t have any memories of being very impressed, at that time I think I mostly saw the computer as a good tool for writing, it took me a while to warm to the internet.
TBH, I probably use it very unimaginatively now as well. I have a few places I visit, but I don’t really look around for anything outside of my regular haunts. It’s practical for paying bills, sending emails and reading the newspaper, and to watch things on YouTube since I don’t have a TV anymore. I don’t order much online, just CDs, sometimes DVDs and occasionally books, but I prefer physical shops.
Beginning of the ’90s I bought a Commodore Amiga on a whim and not long after, a modem to connect to Bulletin Boards to chat to other Amiga users and download nifty little shareware/freeware programs. After a while I got an account with Demon Internet and discovered Usenet groups and The Web.
Access was via dial-up modems and was very slow and very expensive. Per-minute charging at a (slightly) premium call rate. You didn’t browse online in those early days if you didn’t need to, you downloaded what you were after and checked it out after you’d closed the connection.
The Web was all primitive primary colour graphics and reams of text on black backgrounds to start with, not very exciting, but not for long. Within a couple of years it was as full-colour as your computer and monitor permitted and had started taking over my life. Chatting to new friends and acquaintances in Usenet groups and email, a little bit of gaming and eventually switching from Commodore machines to PCs, as Commodore folded. Broadband and always-on connections came later.
I played a trivial pursuit game. A question came up typed like a vidi printer. You then answered it and a reply came up yes or no. Then on to the next question. No score just yes or no. We were enthralled.
Commodore and CompuServe, names that bring back a Proustian rush, serenaded by the modem dial tone. I remember trying to download a song from, yes, Napster, it taking literally forever and costing, thus, probably more than a legit purchase. I remember, when Napster went payment, paying to keep the songs I actually liked, at, was it, about 9p a go. Anyone recall and remember that time, or is it a vivid faux fantasy?
I think I got the interent about 1998 when I bought a Siemens PC (I think) from Tesco’s in Twickenham for £800. It came with a few ISP options via a CD and I picked Global Internet (I think). Therefore, the first thing I did was sign up to an ISP.
Thereafter, I used to find songs on Napster, select around 5 or so and set them to download before I went to bed. I would get up in the morning and see which ones had successfully downloaded.
Probably the second thing I did was to order books and CDs from Amazon – both in the US and in the UK. Particulalrly region 1 dvds which were often not available in the UK. I used Play.com a lot for a year or two (didn’t we all),
It was in college in Limerick in November 1994 and I dunno what we went looking at. Far as I recall, all that on t’internet was Lightbulb jokes, Grateful Dead bootleg discographies and hilarious RFCs for things that the world didn’t need. Kinda virtual Heath Robinson things.
What I DO remember is that in, around 1995 or early 1996, with Real Audio becoming ubiquitous, it was time for me to propose a title for what we called the Final Year Project – a mini thesis, if you will, that everybody had to to do get their degree.
I went from law lecturer to law lecturer trying to explain, ‘look you can go to a computer in the library and listen to music that lives on a computer somewhere else…surely to heck this is going to cause problems in relation to copyright or something…’
Nobody wanted to know. Looking back I can understand. Firstly there *was* no precedent for anything like this, and law folks like their precedents. Also, Can you remember how iffy Real Audio sounded? Mp3 existed (just about) as format, and the files might have been 10% of the size of WAV files but weren’t such a big deal because hard drives weren’t huge at this point in time and besides, how could you get a full song from computer A to computer B? Napster was three years away yet.
“Yes, right now it’s not a thing but it will be” I’d say
Anyway – if i’d thought to send Metallica’s manager an email instead – i might have made a few quid.
Went to an internet cafe with a bloke from work mid 93 and the only thing we could think to look up was what we on at the cinema. We also used it for various weird discussion groups about arcane middleware development utilities at work. A bloke I worked with left, developed an early version of a payment system and sold out for millions 18 months later.
I got my first internet connected PC in 96 when I lived in France and used it a lot to organise my wedding which was in the UK.
1994, Red Dwarf scripts and dodgy (legal!) porn
Not at the same time
I can remember buying a phone with internet access and pressing the icon only to find I had to type in a subject. Later discovering I needed to be connected to WiFi.
It seems so long ago that the hope for the internet was off the scale- the reality, that a few mega companies would monopolise and control hasn’t outweighed the benefits-I wouldn’t put it up there with the canal system though.
One of the computer magazines had a bootable floppy containing a demo on QNX together with a primitive web browser, and a small amount of ‘free’ web access. I had a poke around the few websites that were out there, but there wasn’t really that much available.
Somewhere or other I have a note of my ten digit Compuserve ID number. Waited a couple of hours to download a black and white gif of a photo taken by a NASA probe somewhere or other else deep in the solar system. It arrived a line at a time and by the time I had the whole thing I’d lost all interest in space travel.