When did you first hear about the Internet? How long after that did you get it in your home?

[Rebecca VA]

I'll go first.  My husband was attending Naval post-graduate school in California in 1991.  One day he came home and told me he had experienced the most interesting thing in the computer lab.  There was a network of computers all around the country -- and maybe the world -- where users could chat with each other in real time.  He had gone onto a chat room for woodworking hobbyists (his hobby at the time), and they were chatting about projects they were doing.  

 

I assumed this was just a military thing, and I was just mildly interested.  It wasn't until four years later -- when we lived overseas -- that I first saw actual websites, with shopping and everything.  It was available to my husband in his workplace, but we didn't have it at home.  It wasn't until 1998 that we got Internet at our house, and it was my dad (always up-to-date on trends, but not especially computer-literate) who insisted that we get it.  

 

I'm actually surprised that it took us that long.  My husband has always been an Apple fan -- he had Apple computers in college in the 1980s -- and he has a graduate degree in computer systems.  I think he was probably just so extremely busy at work during those years that he didn't think about setting up the Internet in our home.

 

Oh!  I just remembered something!  We had a primitive form of the Internet in my office -- at a technology-based university -- back in 1984.  Our office was linked up so that employees could "talk" to each other via computer.  I thought it was mildly interesting but never associated it with the Internet that came later.

 

Let me hear your stories!!

 

[G5052]

For me, it was 1981 at college, but it was just email and logging into distant servers for various things.  When the first browsers came out, I was really excited!

 

[marbel]

I guess it was 1991 or '92 that I had access to the internet at work.  My husband and I met in May of '93 at a get-together organized via a local singles newsgroup which I accessed at work.

 

First memory of a pc in the house is 1997, because I remember getting up in the night to nurse my baby and then spending a little time online.  But I don't remember what I would have had access to at that point.  Maybe newsgroups still?   My husband studied computer engineering and had a career as a computer architect before he went to seminary. 

 

I remember my brother at one point asking me "what's with all this www.com I see everywhere?"  He never did get completely computer literate. :cool:

[kewb]

In terms of personal use, it was shortly after I got married.  Dh has always been a computer geek and he bought a pc and had us on the internet in 1992.  At the time I had no use for it and did not start going online until 5 years later when pregnant with our first and I started researching.  I started using my computer at work in 1992 for email.

 

I first heard of the concept of computers talking to one another from the movie Wargames n 1983.

[HelenNotOfTroy]

Had internet access at home in 1994, first saw world wide web stuff (on Netscape browser) in 1995 on college campus computer.

[Cinder]

I first heard of the internet around 92. We had computers at work before that but they didn't have internet access; just inter-office email.

 

We got online in 94 when we got our first home computer. AOL was the only game in town for awhile. Not long after there was a huge boom in internet usage because we couldn't get online. In our town AOL had only one dial-up number--that was it. Back then you had to call to cancel your service. :laugh: By then a local ISP had been established and they had several numbers so we switched.

 

I'm surprised I hadn't heard of the internet earlier than that. Maybe I did, but not being a computer geek maybe it just didn't register. I *am* old enough to have taken the first programming course my high school offered in 81. And we all had to take Fortran in college. And you had to install DOS before you could use your home computer. Boy, those were the days, eh?

[JustEm]

hmmm I was born in 1986, and I had an e-mail account, we had internet access at home, in 1991 in order to email my sister who was gone for a summer that year. Not sure how long it had been in the home at that point but my parents' both encountered it at their jobs in colleges

[PrincessMommy]

I can't remember when I first heard about it.  DH is a software engineer, so it must have been in the 80's.    We got internet access in '93.  That's the year we moved and I'm pretty sure we didn't have the internet at our other house - of course, my memory is sketchy. 

[Guest inoubliable]

1994 or 1995, I'm guessing. I was a freshman in high school. Internet wasn't available for our rural address until sometime in 1996. We were the first in the neighborhood to have the internet up and running in our house. 

 

There are a few Youtube videos with the sound of dialup. My kids think it's enormously funny to think of having to "dial in" using a "home phone line" and then listen to the sounds of the modem. LOL. 

[jelbe5]

I visited a friend who had Internet and showed it to me around 1996.

 

I think we got Internet in our house around 1998 or 1999. We are a Mac family and my dh bought a Blueberry iMac. We had free Internet at the time through the University he works at. It was dial-up. I was fascinated.

 

For me, the Internet was instrumental in helping me with our decision to homeschool. It was also very helpful as I became aware of my son's autism.

[Soror]

I used Internet at school in 1995-1996. I had access at home 1996-1997. I don't remember when I heard of the Internet, I lived very rural and we were very behind the times.

[Heather in Neverland]

I first heard about it around 1993 I think. I had it in my home in mid-1996 and I have had it ever since. It was originally dial-up. I got cable modem in 1997.

[Murphy101]

Dh and I met in a trade school for high schoolers computer programming classes back in '91, we knew that www was on the horizon then. By '99 I had a cheap home computer for college classes I took part-time, but I only accessed the www at school due to funds. In 2000, we moved, upgraded our computer and got NetZero dial up Internet.

[DawnM]

I remember buying a new Gateway computer in 1990 and the Gateway rep asked me if I wanted a modem or not.  I didn't see the need so I said no!   :lol:

 

I got my first computer with a modem and internet in 1994 I think it was.  

[Twilight Woods]

1993

[Farrar]

In 1993 we got AOL. But I left for college just a few months later and I remember we were behind all my friends.

 

I remember very clearly in 1991, my best friend was in a tough class where the teacher would give extra credit for answering these impossible trivia questions sometimes. She was determined to get this one that apparently only one kid ever had gotten in many years - what was the name of the cat on Mary Tyler Moore's production company intro. She pestered every single person about it for like a week and I remember going, wait, don't you have that computer service (I can't remember the name now - something before AOL or Prodigy). She asked on one of their message boards and had the answer within a day. And the teacher was shocked about how she got it. Ha.

[xixstar]

Well lets see, I most remember when I was a kid we had AOL for a while so that would have been early 90s I'm guessing. I just remembers tons of chat rooms.

 

Before that, we also had this little device that connected to the phone and you could play text games or talk to people on it, it was all text base. I remember I would stay up late and connect to it and my mom got so mad when she found out - I think it was a service that you paid based on the time used. That might have been around '88-'90 or so.

 

After that, in high school, I remember reading something in magazines about Gopher and internet and our local library had access but it was so hard to find stuff as it was text based as opposed to AOL's format at the time. I relied on magazine articles and what not to mention neat information that was available and then would go seek them out. This was probably 1997ish or 1998 I think. Found some really cool information though.

 

Then my first year in college, had a computer with AOL and graphic internet I recognize now and I also made my first website, so that was 1998-1999. Oh the animated gifs and all the colorful text and <blink > tags. :)

[Parrothead]

It would have been 1997 that I found out about the Internet available for most anyone at home.

 

I knew about computers since high school in the early 80s. I knew modems were used to talk to other computers then. But I wasn't aware that of the advancements to them and the Internet until Christmas week of 1997. Dh and I got our first computer and modem in 1998. We've had Internet ever since.

[Arcadia]

1991 when I was first year at engineering. My parents bought a dial-up modem so that I could dial-in to the school's mainframe servers. We had a number to dial to get into our engineering servers. For fast speed internet use to do school work, my ex-classmates and I will just overnight in the computer labs. The campus internet network is fast and infrastructure often upgraded.

[NicAnn]

I was born in '86 as well. It's difficult to remember a time without Internet. I know I used it in fifth grade social studies. And in 97 we used it at a slumber party to chat.

[swellmomma]

We got internet when I had my oldest in 1998, I used ICQ to instant message with people, and thought it was cool I could connect with complete strangers that way.  There was very little in the way of message boards etc back then but I found places to talk about and learn about parenting etc.

We had had a computer for years in the home I grew up in but it was not connected to the internet.  So that was my first experience with it.  With the dial-up modem.  I can still "hear" the tones in my head of that connection being made, and making sure I had no important phone calls to deal with before connecting.

I have been hooked ever since.

[Erin]

In 1991.  

My little brother played around in the local state college's lab (he was a freshman in high school and also 1/2 of the school district's tech support team).  So he got internet at home through their server, but his was the only computer that had it.  The folks didn't see a need to get theirs online.  

Consequently, he and I, a senior, would go on the internet and just explore.  

 

At that point it was usually just servers at other colleges, though.   Well, other than that one time in '93 when he hacked into the Pentagon.  But that was mostly to see how far some kid in Nebraska could get.  Online security became one of his specialities after the FBI chased him out...  Mom said the day he did it, he came flying down to the kitchen, with this absolutely panicked look on his face.  "I didn't know, Mom!"  lol 

 

 

 

I vividly remember coming home from college in the fall of '92, my freshman year, and he had to show me this cool new thing on the internet called the World Wide Web.  

By my sophomore year, in the fall of '93, I already had professors who were telling us how to use it to find information.  

 

I've had it in my own home since DH and I graduated in '96 and got our first grown-up house.

(that's a testament to subsidized communications in rural America, btw.  We were 30 miles from ANY town, so far out we only got mail every other day.  But we had a good internet provider)

[KungFuPanda]

DHs father was an IBM executive. He's always had an interest in computers and grew up with prototypes coming home. He also subscribed to some computer geek periodicals, so he stayed current as things developed. I learned about this stuff from him, but I'm not nearly as interested. He got a computer shortly after we married in 93. HE did networky stuff on it all along, but I don't remember participating until about 98. That's when I was at home with my first baby, in a new town where I knew no one, and discovered the Babycenter boards.

[Spy Car]

Spring, 1970.

 

I was twelve years old and attended the UCLA Engineering/Computer Science Open House with my Dad where I got to try out their recently installed ARAPANET link to Stanford. It was the very first link in what we now call "the internet." I remember chatting "on-line" with a person at Stanford, and playing a chess match over the link. I was extremely excited by the technology, and felt like I was looking into "the future."

 

My first connection at "home" was via an acoustic coupled modem (it had "muffs" that you placed a telephone into) at my Berkeley apartment in 1979-80. I connected to the UNIX mainframe on campus using a terminal. I could code at home and use the (then) very limited features of the internet. Almost nobody had "dial-up" or "dial-in" capability in 1979, this was super-high-tech, but I had a friend who had an extra modem and terminal, and he hooked me up. It was amazing!

 

In the 80's used Prodigy, AOL, and Mosaic. Used various BBS services, Golpher, Usenet, etc. 

 

Pretty much witnessed the whole evolution.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

 

[Lara in Colo]

I didn't get internet at home until 2010--- my DH used it a work though.

[Dandelion]

I think I first heard about it (while in college) in 1991.  Got my first computer at home around 1995, with AOL dial-up ("You've got mail!").  Worked with several very basic, limited computer networking systems at my first two jobs (just internal networks - no outgoing connection).  Started working for Intel Corporation in '99 and it was like jumping light-years ahead in terms of internet capability. 

[SKL]

You expect me to remember back that far??

 

Let's see.  I don't remember using email in college, but we had to use it in grad school.  I think that it was hyped up when I went to law school in 1988 because all the students were given an email address.  I don't think I ever used it until 1989 when it was required for some classes.  We also had to pull corporate data from online databases. 

 

I got a computer with a modem around 1990, at which time I began using internet at home (I think).  I'm not sure it was called "internet" at the time.

 

Not sure when I ever heard of it.  Obviously before 1988.  My brother was a computer geek by 1980, and even I took programing in high school, so I was somewhat aware of technology.

 

I do remember the TV news telling about the great invention called the fax.  I thought it was complete BS at the time.  ;)

[Whereneverever]

I was born in '85. I had a computer with Internet in my room by 7th grade and a computer with Internet was in the home for at least a few years before that.

[Annie G]

In 1992 we had Prodigy and I spent a lot of time on the message boards.  We had it a year or two earlier but it was more dh's thing then. But we moved away from family in 92 and my Prodigy friends made me feel less isolated and lonely.   Still remember my user ID!

[Night Elf]

1992. I was working at The University of Georgia. I can't recall why the IT guy showed it to me but he showed me how to read newsgroups. I'm sure I got my laptop with a speed of 1200 bps (isn't that the speed?) within a few months. Then I learned about MUD games which are online role-playing games, sort of like a dungeons and dragons type of thing. I spent a great deal of time on those games.

[Erin]

 

 

my Prodigy friends made me feel less isolated and lonely.   Still remember my user ID!

I still USE the user ID I made up for usenet boards back in '93.  lol   (Not "Erin," of course.  ;) )

[Amy in NH]

I had Prodigy for email in 1990 when I was at college.  I used it to talk to my father who lived in California at the time.  I vaguely remember a few other places I could access "online", but I couldn't tell you what they were.

[J-rap]

It was in the mid-1980's, but I only heard about it then. It wasn't something that everyone was looking into, at all. My mother has always been the techi in our family, and she bought me one of the original Apple computers (they didn't even have the iMac name yet) in the 80's. I was not connected to any internet until the early 1990's. Again, my mother insisted I get an internet service and set me up with an email account.

 

Even today at 85 years old, she has an Macbook Pro, an i-Phone, an i-Pod, and an i-Pad. :)

[NCMom]

I remember knowing about it well before this, but the first time I had real access to the internet was in 1989 at my first real job.   We had a Commodore PET in the late 70's early 80's, when I was a kid, but no internet..

 

My dh and I bought our first PC for home use in 1994, complete with dialup modem, of course,  and it cost more than the birth of my 2nd child a year later in 1995. :glare:

 

Ah Compuserve, those were the days, lol.

Georgia

[Tap]

I have no idea when I first heard about it, but had it in the house in the mid-90s.

 

 

[Mothersweets]

We didn't have it in our  home until 2003. Late to the party and all that. :)

[redsquirrel]

I knew about it, used it in the 1980s. There was this thing in college called electronic mail that the college was encouraging students to use to communicate with their professors. We had to attend a training and get assigned our address. There was also a lab at the college where I would hang out and play games etc. I also did my work study with the computer department and heard lots of discussions and saw demos of many things.

 

I had dial up at home in the 1990s. DH works for a university and it was provided at home as part of his job. I remember when the university stopped providing internet for everyone because it was available through cable etc.

 

remember taking classes in Fortran? and floppy discs? And Stupid Mac Tricks? I loved that moose

[Rebecca VA]

Spy Car, I think you win!

[vonfirmath]

In the summer between high school and college (1991) I got to use email and the UseNET and FTP and such while working at a program on the Texas A&M campus.  I went to school there and had my own email address again.

 

In 1992, I purchased a 5-yr membership at eskimo.com, which I could either telnet into or dial in. From that point up to the present I have always had either dialup or otherwise access to the Internet.

 

I was dragged kicking and screaming into interactive webpages. I preferred the old, simple, webpages done in text that could be viewed easily over a dialup connection. But I did get here eventually.  (And even during my kicking and screaming years I was perfectly happy programming Cold Fusion pages to access Access databases for simple textual pages. So there was interactivity there already.)

 

My dad got a Compuserve account along about the same time to read groups and such on. I also had a friend in the dorms with me 1991-92 who had an AOL account of her own and I thought that made her RICH. Because my parents would never have gotten one of those for me .

 

[songsparrow]

I first heard about the internet when I was an undergrad, so somewhere between 1987 & 1991.  It, and email, was available through our school's computer labs, but I never really used either because my professors didn't use them, so I had no need to.  I did use our intra-campus network to access library catalogs and such.  Perhaps if you majored in math, science, or computer science, you would have been more likely to use it at that time.

 

When I got a computer in 1992, it came with a very early version of a program that I think was AOL.  It wasn't like the internet today, but they were more like message boards.  I played with it some, but still didn't know anyone else who was online or used email.  The one thing that I do distinctly remember was that if people would post something that could be construed as advertising - even just noting in their signature that they sold Tupperware - people would be livid and complain that the internet is not for advertising!   :lol:

[QueenCat]

I know we got our first pc in 1989, because I remember how we got the money for it..... When were we online? I don't remember exactly, I presume shortly after that....

[Peach]

I graduated from college in 1985 and we had a campus network for sending messages and such, and the server was huge! I bought my first IBM PS2 around 1990 (with a 'huge' 40 meg hard drive..lol) and that was the year Prodigy's online service launched. It was a closed system but was loads of fun and allowed us to talk to people all over. The Stephen King fan board was very active there. AOL was  around then as well, also closed. A year or so later, both had an ALEX gateway to do some limited WWW searches. I had the Lynx text-based browser in 1992 and in 1993, Mosaic (who became Netscape) launched the first graphical browser. We thought we'd hit the big time :)

 

Prodigy was the opening for my very first online purchase...a VHS tape of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

[Erin]

I bought my first IBM PS2 around 1990 (with a 'huge' 40 meg hard drive..lol)

I was recently telling my kids about the computer their dad and I got when we first got married; a SuperMac with 1 entire gig!!   16 megs of RAM...  lol

Prior to that, I had an Apple IIe and he had a 484(? maybe?  then, as now, I didn't pay attention to PCs)

[Jean in Newcastle]

End of 70's - text based bulletin board system at school.  

 

80's - text based stuff at college.  (none of this was used for personal use).

 

1993 - got our first internet service provider for home.  Started using it for research right away.  

[Laurel]

1988 or so? I was 7 or 8.

[Guest]

I'm a latecomer. My dad wrote software back in the '80s so he had Prodigy and I'd sometimes call him and ask him to look something up for me, but I never thought of using it myself.

 

Dad was literally a rocket scientist when I was a kid in the '70s. He designed guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Cold War, which is not something you'd want a small child to know much more about than "Tell your nursery school teacher that your daddy is an engineer" and " No, not the kind of engineer who drives a train. He does Big Important Grownup things that little girls don't understand". Computers were very expensive when I was a teen and a twentysomething, so I thought of the internet as a just another "Big Important Grownup Thing" and never tried to understand it.

 

In the '90s I used the internet a bit at the library, but was much more excited about being able to peruse the online card catalogue and request any book i wanted from the entire San Francisco public library to be sent to the little branch near our house. dd used the internet a bit during sleepovers and told me about it and I was a bit concerned about the other parents' lack of supervision but too insecure to talk about it. I just tuned out and pulled out my book whenever the Park Day conversation turned to computers and the internet.

 

When dd went back to San Francisco to visit as a teen, she informed me that the "cool stay-at-home dad who did something with computers for a living" was actually selling porn. I was horrified. Please listen to your instincts even if you think you're not smart enough to understand new technology.

 

In 2000, I exchanged addresses with an interesting man who was passing through town. He said he didn't care for snail mail and offered to take me to the library, set up a hotmail account for me, and show me how to use email. I laughed in his face. By that time I equated the internet with trash TV and the mass consumer culture and books and snail mail with educated but low-income folks like ourselves.

 

My snail mail letter to him was returned and I was worried. I left my younger child with a sitter and dd and I headed to the library to  try to figure out hotmail. We didn't have much luck and wound up being asked to leave because we were talking too loud and sounding angry and crazy.

 

I wound up buying a text only email device called the Cidco Mailstation, which I used for about a year. I loved getting back in touch with old friends but I didn't understand the internet and was frustrated when friends who didn't understand my hardware would send attachments and formatted messages that couldn't be displayed. Somehow I couldn't get it through my thick skull that email was for fun, casual conversations at that if anything really important was contained in those messages, the person would have called or sent a letter.

 

I had better luck learning how to use public computers with the help of computer-literate friends I had reconnected with through the mailstation and within the next year i acquired and learned to use a 386 and then a 166 Mhz Pentium II that was internet capable. I expected to hate the internet, but I LOVED it, felt like an overgrown teenager, and worried my parents and friends who had known me pre-internet half to death with my "addiction". My tweens, who people had once said needed to go to a "regular" school so that they would have access to the new technology or they would never be able to get jobs, became computer literate just as rapidly.

 

I've never paid for tech instruction for any of us. We learned everything we know from googling and forum boards. I currently run Trisquel, an Ubuntu derivative that has had all the non-free proprietary software stripped from it but I am Windows-literate enough to be able to help many of my friends with software problems and I also do some hardware related repairs as well.  I have found these skills useful for bartering as well as the good feeling you get from being able to help someone and save them money.

 

I do tend to get carried away and spend more time online than i would like. I have also acquired some "haters" and learned some lessons about oversharing private information, but so far the worst that has happened has been having my posts on MDC copied and pasted and taken out of context on that anti-MDC board and a hater finding my physical address on google and stuffing my mailbox with formula coupons addressed to my childless unmarried 24 year old daughter.

 

Those are both wake-up calls to me, but people are people everywhere and I'm sure I would have had negative experiences offline if I had spent the same amount of time and energy taking adult ed classes or going to night clubs.

 

For my olders, the internet was mostly an amusing diversion and I didn't use it for school very much. Things sure have changed! I feel very much like a first time homeschooler with little ds and appreciate all the help I can get. I am perfectly capable of politely saying "Thank you, but I think I have that under control" if I prefer using older resources or methods.

 

[AmandaVT]

I was in high school in 1992 and my dad, who was and still is an uber geek, called me in to the computer room to show me something. He was showing me his modem and telling me all about the Internet. I remember being really bored by the conversation and listened politely and left as soon as I could! 

 

The following year, I took a high school astronomy class and the teacher had us look up articles and information on the Internet at the school. On compuserve maybe? 

 

When I got to college in 1995, all the dorms had internet access and it was the first time I was actually interested. I was able to e-mail and chat with people online. 

 

Worked for an ISP starting in 1997 and I've been a computer geek ever since.

[PrairieSong]

I don't remember when I first heard about the internet, but we got connected at home in 1997.  We had a pc before that with educational games and word processing and stuff on it.

[Mrs Mungo]

First heard about it? I am not even sure. My uncle is a computer programmer and it seems like he has always been online, back when they still had a rotary phone.

 

We got Internet at home shortly after arriving at our first duty station in '95.

[Delirium]

BBS  in the 80s I guess.