Was Just Thinking About Pre Internet Days...

[8bitagent]

Was just thinking back to the days before high speed internet in your pocket, smart phones, blue tooth, and everyone knowing you business on facebook with hourly updates.
On older sitcoms, it's funny how many story arcs would have been ruined had someone only had a cell phone, or access to the internet(or a phone that goes online)

Before I got heavily involved in daily online activities by the late 1990's, I was going to the library and book stores a lot. That was my "wikipedia". And trying to read a book on a nook or ipad just isnt the same.
Newspaper circulation, way down. And remember Yellow Pages?

I'm curious what some of your guy's early online experiences were like, the "halcyon days" of the internet. This could even include BBS, text adventuring on Mudds, prodigy, aol, compusa, etc.
Wondering how your mind's wiring has been changed with the internet, cellphones, etc. Have you noticed a change in attentiveness with yourself or others, as well as a change in speech, relaxing, deciphering information or thoughts? Some people seem so damn fidgety now.

Also curious when the first time you discovered parapolitical topics online. I remember If irst started using BBS in 90/91, but just casually at a friends house. Then in 1993 my friend had AOL, which I thought was quite a trip. By 1995 I first went online on http://www sites, but it was the summer of 1996 I first stumbled upon this sort of stuff. TWA 800 had just happened, and I remember using altavista search to look for news regarding it. Happened upon a conspiracy theorist chatroom on yahoo, though found that there was a lot of "ZOG" talk. This was during the height of the "patriot anti government" hoopla, but it was also smack dab in the middle of family conspiratainment in hollywood. When JFK, Roswell, Men in Black or films like "Conspiracy Theory" with Mel Gibson were all the rage.

On another level thoug, I'm wondering how you feel you have personally changed from the internet as a whole all these years later. Is modern life in 2011 like what you imagined?
Or for that matter, cellphones, attitudes, culture, etc?

This study released today shows the effects of so called "multitasking" on the teenage brain, with endless texts, tweets, etc
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42557051/ns/nightly_news/

I do find I was able to enjoy things a lot more back when, when nothing was available instant. Now, it's like a genie in a bottle. The second a movie, song, album, program, tv show, video game, etc pops in your head, within minutes its yours...to shortly after its like "meh...whats next?" I wonder if the appreciation level has depreciated

Just the whole meeting people thing. Meetups, books groups, flash mobs, romantic dates, finding an old restaurant you always heard about.

On the flipside, not only can you find support groups for no matter what is ailing you quite easily and find a voice, you can find all the information you want...be it history of a company, actor's credits or rare genus of plants in West Papua. You can even be an instant celebrity and megastar on youtube and have your own huge weekly audience.

You can even take on whole governments, such as modern Anon or Assange and Wikileaks. Or mass protests from Madison to Cairo.
Sadly, information can also me altered, spun or flat out stamped out(China, Iran, Saudi Arabia) If we listen to the media, this whole internet phenomenon has even spawned violent hate groups, terrorists and serial killers.

One has to wonder what the future will bring, and if it's anything like out of a William Gibson book.

[Nordic]

Mid 90's. AOL. Chatting with strangers. Got into it. I was living with my girlfriend at the time, we'd had a lot of problems. Trying to make it work eight years into it. She got into chatting, I got into chatting. Was surprised on a few occasions to be doing sexual chatting with complete strangers. It was fun for a while. Until one girl suddenly claimed to be a 15 year old. Yikes. And I don't think she was kidding. Scared me away from THAT.

But then I was looking for a file I'd accidentally erased on our shared computer, and found a snippet of chat that my girlfriend had had, with a total stranger, where she had confessed her entire story of how she'd cheated on me. She named names, everything. I knew the guy, of course. Wow.

Good times!

Anyway, she and I went our separate ways, and I never would have known she'd cheated on me if it weren't for the weird allure of telling your deepest secrets to total strangers online. (Yes, my behavior was terrible, too. It was a really messed up relationship, I was young, didn't really know what the hell I was doing).

I find the Facebook "phenomenon" so bizarre in a way, especially back when it was MySpace, because it seemed like AOL 2.0 to me. Wow, chat with people online, how revolutionary. Not.

I used to spend a lot of time at libraries, too. I've found the internet to be a godsend, in a way, for finding out SOME information about a lot of things, and quickly. The library was slow, ponderous, frustrating. But on the other hand, having to pick up an actual BOOK and reading through it made me a far greater expert on whatever subject I was looking into! ( I did a lot of research back then for the screenplays I was writing.) Books are so much in depth, and you're kind of forced to read them, whereas it's so easy on the internet to skim. There's so much to skim!

The internet is great in so many ways, but it's so ..... shallow in many others. For instance, I was researching American slavery, and had to read a ton of books on it. I've googled a lot of the same information that I read about in those books, and it's there on the internet, but it all seems to be a Readers Digest Condensed version. I don't know if I ever could have written the epic historical screenplay that I wrote back then if my research had all been internet based.

So pros and cons.

I did meet my wife online. Match.com. In 2000, back before everybody was doing it. We were both kind of embarrassed to tell people back then, and of course, as soon as you're in a new relationship the first question people ask is "how did you two meet?" We made up a story, but I couldn't tell it without bursting into laughter, so we started just telling people the truth. Now it seems passe.

I didn't expect to meet a wife on there, I was just single and bored and looking for some fun. Found fun a few times, but also had some very awkward and strange dating experiences. It was a whole new backwards way of meeting people. But if you were just looking for a date for the weekend, it was kind of a sure thing.

My wife was just trying it out to, for the pure rollicking hell of it, sure didn't expect to meet her husband, either.

There's a moment where you think "I can't marry someone I met online!" Because it just seems kind of ..... shallow somehow.

But it can work. I've also heard horror stories.

I didnt' get into the parapolitical stuff until after 2000, and the GWB coup. I was fucking pissed off, and one day I saw a listing of "websites that piss off Republicans". D.U. was one of them, and I hit on that and went deep into that for a while. Seemslikeadream was there, and Octafish, and some other people who were just fucking AWESOME and I remember thinking "I want to know what these people know" because I suddenly realized how ignorant I was, and I was not someone who liked being ignorant. Got banned from there, probably a couple of times, went over to Dailykos when it was still good, during its peak, really, then got banned from there right as it started going HEAVILY downhill.

Now I only post here and on FB. I keep the FB thing to a minimum because most of my friends probably have no interest in this shit and I don't want to bother them with it. Then again, I've had friends tell me "keep it coming!"

[Canadian_watcher]

yeah, my early experience was in chat rooms, too. Scrolling & frustrating to keep track of but really fun to meet people from anywhere and everywhere and find so much in common.

Remember back in the day when no matter WHAT you searched for on Webcrawler you'd get almost exclusively porn results?

I also love just being able to get the answer to everything right away.. (well .. you know what I mean, stupid question type stuff that used to drive you crazy like "Who was the guy in the Godfather who played the accountant again???)

I am not sure if my attention span has

[Jeff]

I resent the New Flesh, but there's no denying it's my flesh now.

[8bitagent]

Anyone got into pen pals via "snail mail"? (the fact we have to now refer to letter writing as "snail mail" is funny) I dont think anyone even hand writers letters anymore, or even types them
I remember a long time ago I must have had hundreds of penpals back then. Sending mixtapes, long letters, etc. A lot could be imbued by each pen stroke.

I resent the New Flesh, but there's no denying it's my flesh now.

Well Jeff, I think no matter what era you lived in, you would have found your voice and fans of it. I remember doing research on sci fi and UFO fanzines and underground newsletters that everyone from Roger Ebert to Gray Barker were a part of. The 1950's-60's sci fi zine culture I find highly fascinating, just the whole advent of meeting and communicating with people via snail mail and letter sections.

yeah, my early experience was in chat rooms, too. Scrolling & frustrating to keep track of but really fun to meet people from anywhere and everywhere and find so much in common.

Remember back in the day when no matter WHAT you searched for on Webcrawler you'd get almost exclusively porn results?

I also love just being able to get the answer to everything right away.. (well .. you know what I mean, stupid question type stuff that used to drive you crazy like "Who was the guy in the Godfather who played the accountant again???)

I am not sure if my attention span has

Yeah attention spans I'm sure have shrunk to absurd ADHD levels by now with a lot of people. We've been conditioned to act in shock almost if someone says they dont have a cellphone or go online all that much. But google, man...You might be talking with someone or think "What was that one movie that had that one bizarre scene, I think it was a 1970's movie?" or "what was that one song with lyrics that kind of went like this". Boom. Instant. Just google it, IMDB it, wiki it, or youtube it(or yahoo question it) The internet didnt become a 3d virtual avatar world as 1993/1994 predicted, in fact the ultra minimalist google/craigslist aesthetic seems like the height of human achievement. (I still have horrid memories of terrible 1996-2001 geocities/angelfire layouts)

Oh man, I totally remember webcrawler, as well as altavista.

And chatrooms! That whole chat phenomenon is gone, where ya could just join in on random discussions. That was a total staple of the 90's. I definitely remember as well, all those early-mid 90's counter culture/computer magazines, like Boing Boing and Mondo 2000. Even 2600, as well as early Wired issues. I kind of wish virtual reality had its place.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

I got to it late. Some time in the late nineties, a family member distributed a disc with software for a free dial-up e-mail account so that we, as a family, could communicate thusly. I kept the disc around, but didn't install the software until about 2000. The first time I started using the e-mail address with any enthusiasm was when I met a girl and began a e-correspondence after she went back to her home country. I remember the joy/disappointment when, after waiting the two minutes for the connection and subsequent loading of the in-box, I would see either a message from her or nothing.

Flash forward about a decade: The last time our entire immediate family met in one place, I deliberately decided not to take my laptop with me; I wanted to be present at this reunion. Not only did everyone else have their respective machines with them when they arrived and spend the majority of their time on them, but I found myself on one occasion - I kid you not, hand on the heart-router, with the www gods as my witness - in a circle of six chairs, the other five occupants all with their laptops in place, playing Second Life.

And the thing is: We are a communicative bunch. We love to talk to each other; argue; discuss; joke around, etc. So it's not like we were actively trying to avoid each other.

The Net has brought us much. But I am surprised that I got through this missive without changing tabs.

[The Consul]

Mosaic. Found information RE potential bus partner. Blew my mind both positive and negative (saved from nightmare). Realized it was going to change everything without changing anything. Witnessed the birth of imdb and watched it as a sort of measure of what the internet became. Loopmaniacs.

[norton ash]

Less asking, talking, singing. When I worked at a library and people were seeking a piece of music, sometimes they would hum and sing. When I'd catch a piece of unidentified music, I used to do the same for friends, and the geeks at the used record store, with their big yellow RecordList? DiscService? bound file.

I heard Wreckless Eric's 'Whole Wide World' in a noisy bar in Winnipeg in '78 so and only had a couple of phrases to work with before I went back to my smaller town. (Didn't want to ask the DJ or the waiter because I was 16 and staying as low-profile as possible.)

So the question was 'It's this cool noisy pop song by a guy with a whiny voice about how there's only one girl in the whole wide world and she lives in Tahiti or something.' It took me months until I special-ordered the 'Stiffs Live' album, where I heard Eric for what I thought was the first time... he used the line 'whole wide world' in introducing a different song, and I recognized the singing voice. It was a Eureka! moment.

I think of that experience now when I isolate a mere line of lyrics from an unidentified song and go find it... when I hear music long-mysterious to me during a film and simply search the soundtrack... or how when I go to the library now it seems like a nostalgic experience.

It seems we don't so much put on the new flesh as the new flesh accumulates gradually, as it does in life, as the cells are replaced. All this access to information would floor the 16-year-old me, would be pure sci-fi, but I suppose the long decades eased me into taking it all for granted.

[yathrib]

The internet killed the emerging zine revolution of the 1980s/90s dead, dead, dead. Not to mention longstanding elements of proto-geek culture like APAs.

[Luther Blissett]

I had some friends who would talk about their online activities in the early- to mid-90s. I think that was the first time I ever heard of the idea that computers could connect to one another via modem lines. Most of the stories were from a lifelong female friend, talking about sex stuff (weird to think about now, because we were 13-14). We couldn't afford a computer at home, but when I left for college in '98 I got an email address and was able to start using roommates' and girlfriends' computers etc. I was sort of a slow starter and I don't think I really "got it."

Honestly I think I was aching for it though. I was a restlessly inquisitive kid and coming off of a heavy books and punk zines phase from the mid-90's. I was an explorer who was being constantly disappointed by what I found. There's a really difficult-to-define idea behind what I found myself feeling in the 90's - a sort of cultural emptiness, I guess. Poorly attended shows, films with only two characters that made the outside world feel like a desolate place, books that no one else liked, zines that no one else read, things discussed in all-night diners that not many people besides a handful of my friends wanted to discuss. I did a lot of singular, lonely, aimless driving as a teenager, just looking around for stuff.

So when I did get involved in the internet, it felt like a revelation. I also learned how to use a computer at a time in my life that I was defining myself, which coincidentally also happened at the time that "the internet" was really coming of age itself. I adapted quickly and am now pretty proficient with a lot of programming languages.

I don't really miss the world before this technology, and don't see much in the way of change in my ability to concentrate. I do see it a lot in others and can accept that misuse of the technology can be blamed for it. If anything I just think it's made me more intellectually agile than before.

Interest in high weirdness, progressive politics, and "conspiracy theory" were sort of part of my upbringing, so gravitating towards that on the internet was only natural. I don't remember what I started seeing first but I remember being very excited to continue some more in-depth research of classic encounter cases that had been only hinted at in some of my mother's books.

[JackRiddler]

.

APAs still exist, I hear.

This is the one I served as CM when I was 16:

http://www.google.com/search?client=ope ... 8&oe=utf-8

[Searcher08]

Cyberia The first Internet cafe in the UK


It was a sunny end-of-summer day in London in 1994. I remember coming in and saying to one of the early geek-girl on staff there..
"I have never seen a website - could you show me how to do it"
A couple of minutes later, she dropped me off, with a fine latte, in the Log of the Captain of the Greenpeace ship protesting the nuclear tests in French Polynesia. I found out what the weather was like. What the crew ate. The colour of the previous sunset. What the mood was like. I saw pictures, the colours of the Polynesian sea.
The first immersion in remote connection. It lasted for twenty minutes. I remember they just did twenty minute tickets at first. Everyone wanted to do it.
'Unplugging'
I will never forget the feeling of emerging out from the Cyberian cave into the astringent sunshine.
Part of me was still located on a boat floating gently near a Polynesian atoll and sipping it's sights sounds tastes and smells; I was no longer fully here.
I knew I never would be, either. Some part of me would now be forever elsewhere.

As I walked down the street, I wondered if others could sense this and if I looked different, like after my first teenage kiss.

[8bitagent]

Yes! The "IMDB" generation. They even have apps where you tap on your android OS or iphone and it finds the song playing in a bar, club or wherever youre at. Hey, what was that song or one movie? Instant knowledge with wiki, google, pandora, last fm, youtube, etc. I think they literally have apps for anything...hell, finding the nearest cleanest bathroom in public.

The internet killed the emerging zine revolution of the 1980s/90s dead, dead, dead. Not to mention longstanding elements of proto-geek culture like APAs.

You're speaking my language! From 1992 through 1996 I was huge into fanzines, magazines like Boing Boing and Mondo 2000, etc. I used to contribute to punk/poetry zines and even made my own oddball ones. Used to go to Berkeley comic and record shops to get zines, and had endless amounts of snail mail and zines hit my mailbox. Now? Just ads. Nothing but ads and the occasional bill. Last time I wrote a hand letter to someone was 2004. Hell, I don't even get emails anymore. But yeah I had my address in the back of so many magazines looking for pen pals, a big no no these days. But people back then were so full of excitement and enthusiasm! I got such a high receiving and opening every letter and responding, opening up every zine. Man nothing like that today. Even print media as a whole is on its way out.

[8bitagent]

I had some friends who would talk about their online activities in the early- to mid-90s. I think that was the first time I ever heard of the idea that computers could connect to one another via modem lines. Most of the stories were from a lifelong female friend, talking about sex stuff (weird to think about now, because we were 13-14). We couldn't afford a computer at home, but when I left for college in '98 I got an email address and was able to start using roommates' and girlfriends' computers etc. I was sort of a slow starter and I don't think I really "got it."

Honestly I think I was aching for it though. I was a restlessly inquisitive kid and coming off of a heavy books and punk zines phase from the mid-90's. I was an explorer who was being constantly disappointed by what I found. There's a really difficult-to-define idea behind what I found myself feeling in the 90's - a sort of cultural emptiness, I guess. Poorly attended shows, films with only two characters that made the outside world feel like a desolate place, books that no one else liked, zines that no one else read, things discussed in all-night diners that not many people besides a handful of my friends wanted to discuss. I did a lot of singular, lonely, aimless driving as a teenager, just looking around for stuff.

So when I did get involved in the internet, it felt like a revelation. I also learned how to use a computer at a time in my life that I was defining myself, which coincidentally also happened at the time that "the internet" was really coming of age itself. I adapted quickly and am now pretty proficient with a lot of programming languages.

I don't really miss the world before this technology, and don't see much in the way of change in my ability to concentrate. I do see it a lot in others and can accept that misuse of the technology can be blamed for it. If anything I just think it's made me more intellectually agile than before.

Interest in high weirdness, progressive politics, and "conspiracy theory" were sort of part of my upbringing, so gravitating towards that on the internet was only natural. I don't remember what I started seeing first but I remember being very excited to continue some more in-depth research of classic encounter cases that had been only hinted at in some of my mother's books.

Aw, you must be around my age:) I started college in 1996, and I honestly don't recall too much internet access cept for a class in "modern computers"(..such a joke looking back) and a few wired computers in the lab. It was such a new thing back then But that summer was the year I began to regularly go online a lot.

You sound just like me. I used to spend hours at Tower Books reading zines and books, at record stores trying to find more my kind of electic music(my tastes ranged from Bauhaus and Pere Ubu to Einsterzunde Neubauten and Leonard Cohen) I HATED 90's music. Gin Blossoms, Collective Soul, Bush, etc. I just freezeup and cringe when I hear that stuff.
I used to stay up super late in the early 90's, like 91-93, vcr recording 120 minutes every week on MTV. Got into Ministry, Pixies, and proto indie college hipsterish rock at the time.
That whole discovery was so amazing. There was a college radio station that played a lot of cool stuff at the time to, everything from Sisters of Mercy to old Kate Bush.

See I remember shows having a lot of people back then, simply by word of mouth. Just by flyers and friends. I used to go to so many shows back then, maybe because I was younger but it just seemed magical back then. Pre CDR sharing, pre mp3, pre ipod.

But you nailed it: the 90's was all about feeling empty. I call the 90's "From Smells Like Teen Spirit to Columbine".

Also, you're lucky you had a girlfriend back then! Sadly I never had a girlfriend til I was midway through 26...which might explain some things!

[yathrib]

Anyone remember High Weirdness by Mail? Factsheet Five? Those were a lifeline to me when I was in my mid 20s, out in the adult world for the first time, mostly surrounded by older, stuffier people who didn't understand me or my interests. My first experiences on the internet were with Bulletin boards like Dargon(?), and they seemed like the zine culture continued by other means. It sounds incredibly snotty to say this, but I also miss the days when everyone on the internet was smart and fairly well behaved.