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

[Sisyphus]

Actually called "the Internet", with browsers and stuff...probably 1991?92? Netscape navigator. But I used a government version (several really) prior to that for work. Occasionally would play the most awesomely fun text based games I heard about from people at work- it was so much fun for some reason. I didn't use email or anything except for work until we got a pc in 94?95?. Then I discovered newsgroups and chat rooms and Well, the rest is history. All dial up, I will have to play my kids that sound, lol. My oldest was alive when we still had dial up, but he wouldn't remember.

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

We had it in 1990'ish. Some free-net dial up service, before Mosaic.  I know we had a modem years before that that my dad used to get on work computers.

[lea_lpz]

I remember my uncle had Internet when I was in 5th grade and I loved it! That was I suppose in '94. We got Internet in '96 when I was in 7th grade. We had it at school too and were allowed to do research on it for reports at the library.

[Pamela H in Texas]

We had Videotel in 1988-89 (Houston).  Games, bulletin boards.  I wonder if I was one of the first dumb teenagers to meet a boy from online after being told not to give my personal information out.  <sigh>

[Plink]

 

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. 

 Those suction cup muffs and the extremely loud dial-up sound are the core of my first internet memories.  I was a kindergartener in 1979 and our class would "talk" with university students every week.  

 

We had a super high-tech computer lab full of giant green screens, and creative games involving pressing arrow keys to move a turtle (triangular icon) around on the screen.  It really was high-tech for kindergarteners of that time.

 

We had internet in our home by 1990, but I didn't really use it for much until 1993.

[sbgrace]

I think maybe 1992. I was in college and amazed this thing existed. I really had no clue prior to that and didn't use it much...actually, I don't remember using it at all really (graduated in 1995). We didn't have internet in our home until 2004, though I had used it at work prior to that time.

[Guest]

1997 - I was in Jr. High and bought my own computer and got AOL.

 

AOL - lol. When my dh and I first got married, we lived in an apartment and the people below us had their computer turned up so loudly - we'd all have our sliding doors open in the evenings, and we could hear whenever they were connecting.

[Shamzanne]

I remember being in seventh grade computer survey in 1992, a six week class, and the teacher telling us about a new thing called the internet. He told us you had to have a modem in order to use it and told us it was in the closet. I thought it too up a whole closet! I went home and told my dad about it but he didn't believe me. A year later, his company bought us a computer and we were online with AOL. My dad didn't realize we'd been using computers in school since we were little, so he decided to teach us how to use it. He was floored that we knew how to use a mouse and how to navigate better than he did!

[gardenmom5]

heard about it early-mid 80's. they were not user friendly, though I did know people who routinely "chatted" with others by mid-late 80's.  we got it in our house in the 90's, after computers had a much more friendly gui. and other upgrades to the system.

I was aware of corporation/gov computers talking to each other in the 70s.

 

[kiwik]

We didn't have it at university in 1995 but it was starting to be in general households in 1998/99. I finally got it at the end of last year but it is a prepaid t-stick. I am going to get wireless broadband next year I home

[MollyAnn]

The movie War Games was my first introduction to modems and computers talking to each other, but I really thought of it as science fiction. I was in High School '90-'94 and there was a boy I knew who was always always getting into trouble for something he had done on the computer. I remember him bringing in a list of area codes and prefixes from all over the country and out and us making random collect calls on the pay phones during lunch. He also got himself credit card numbers and would order things and have them delivered to whatever neighbor was out of town.

I remember the AOL commercials and seeing emails being sent on Beverly Hills 90210 but I had no idea what they were called. I remember walking out of a 7-11 when I twenty and hearing a teenager call to her friend "email me" and being puzzled because I had no idea what she was talking about.

In 1997 AOL went to flat monthly fee and the boyfriend I had at the time got it for his computer; we were never able to get online because there were too many users.

It wasn't till late '97 that my brother finally talked my parents into getting a computer and AOL that I finally signed on. I thought the Internet was nothing but chat rooms and email. I had no idea about websites and didn't understand www.com

I didn't go on all that often, usually my brother and I were fighting for the phone line. I wanted to be on the phone and he wanted to be on the computer.

DH and I met and married in early '98 and it wasn't till I was living with him and watching him on the computer that I learned all that it was.

 

The kids were asking me about the Internet the other day and when I said "there was no Amazon or Facebook then" they couldn't believe it.

[lynn]

Early 1990's heard about it  Had it in our home early 90's.  I remember getting on AOL chat for the first time and chatting on moms on line at AOL 

[Hannah]

I heard about it at university in 1989/90.  We chatted on usenet (I think it was) on the computers in the computer labs.  I remember being extremely excited to chat with students in the Netherlands.

 

I started work and met my dh in 1995 and he had a pc at home.  That was also the year that everyone at work got pc's on our desks (before that there were shared pc's that you had to book a timeslot to use!) and everyone got email.

 

We got internet at home (with the load modem) in 1997.

 

 

[Maela]

We didn't have a whole lot of money and my parents were not up to date on computers at all.  I was a senior in high school in '98-'99 when we got our first computer.  I remember emailing and chatting with friends then and my parents always yelling at me to get off the computer.  :)

 

I don't remember really browsing the web until I got married in 2004.  I think I just never really understood it until then.

[Maela]

It wasn't till late '97 that my brother finally talked my parents into getting a computer and AOL that I finally signed on. I thought the Internet was nothing but chat rooms and email. I had no idea about websites and didn't understand www.com

 

oh good it looks like I'm not the only one.  :)

[Word Nerd]

I first heard about it and used it near the end of my time at university—1994-95. I didn't have a computer at home or have Internet until 2000 when DH and I married. (I was definitely a minimalist when I was single.) I used the Internet regularly at work or in the library before I had web access at home.

[Peach]

We had several local DOS-based BBS's in the early 90's too, accessed via dial-up modems. When they first appeared, I had a 300 baud dumb terminal to access them..LOL!. I recall, though, back in the 70's my mother used a modem to send things from her office to the main office in another city. That modem consisted of dialing a phone, then sticking the two ends of the receiver into rubber cups on  top of the modem for the machine to send tones to the other. 

[LostSurprise]

Without knowing what it was or how it worked I was first exposed to it in the early '80s. Our neighbor was an electrical engineer and had a huge computer system covering his dining room table and deaf telephones in his garage (my friend's mom was deaf). We weren't allowed to touch any of that stuff though, or really be in the house when he was working so I doubt I understood what it all meant from my friend's explanations. The first time I had a better idea of what was going on was when I saw WarGames in the '80s. 

 

DH was part of a BBS in the late '80s. After we started dating in '95 he showed me how to ping him when he was working in the computer lab.  :001_smile: That was the year our college "got the Internet" but none of the students had email until after I graduated. I was on a student rep on the Library Committee in '93 when the Computers Professor started telling us about this great thing called the World Wide Web and how it was the future of education and communication. Boy, he was excited.

 

One of my roommates was dating a computer guy and he let us surf chat rooms in '95. :001_rolleyes:  Heh. That was kind of a joke, all the guys seemed to be looking for sex chats no matter what room you went into. And even though my husband is in software engineering we didn't bother to have an internet connection until '99 after our first son was born and I was home all day.  

[Word Nerd]

I was in college from 80-84, so it had to be then. I remember going from 3.1 to Windows 95.

Windows 95 wasn't released until 1995. Windows 3.1 came out in 1992.

[Um_2_4]

My dad worked in the industry, so we had computers at home since the early 80s. I still remember my first color dot matrix printer LOL! I also still have I think a REAL floppy disk, you know the ones that actually flopped.

 

But internet and MUDs and newsgroups, I got in the early 90s at home, not sure if 91 or 92 (I was still in high school at the time).

 

But I do remember taking the "enhanced": English 101 at college (meaning they used the internet, it was only the 2nd or 3rd year it was offered) and writing a paper basically saying that "internet could not replace inter personal communications" and that "while a useful research tool, books would not be so easily replaced"  :smilielol5:  :smilielol5:  :smilielol5: !

 

I still am not a HUGE fan of ebooks (I like the feel of a book in my hands too much), but apparently I was wrong. I am kinda sad about that :unsure: .

[FO4UR]

I have no idea.  

 

My grandpa had a modem a long long long time ago.  I was little. It had to have been mid-80's.  Grandpa kept up with the latest technology up until the last few years. 

 

We didn't have the internet in our home until mid-90's though.  My first email account was in college, 1997.