Everyone is on the internet, from my 85 year old uncle to toddlers playing simple games. It's a part of life, and for me, it has enhanced and enriched my life immeasurably.
I got my first computer in 1985, when my son was all of two months old. I didn't realize it at the time, but we were probably in the first wave of people to get a personal computer for home use. They were very expensive, I paid more for that first computer than all five of our current computers put together, and at that point, were regarded by most people as more of a glorified typewriter than a machine that would someday run the world.
My justification for the expenditure was that I needed it for compiling data for my graduate thesis, because I was working with thousands of statistics and every time there was a change it was a click of the keyboard, instead of retyping hundreds of pages. My university department already had several on hand, and I was expected to turn in drafts on floppy disks for my advising professors to work with, which saved huge amounts of time and resources on all sides.
I got a small grant to help me pay for that first computer, Apple's way of ensuring their immediate future, a strategy that didn't pan out very well for them in the long term, but worked out very well for me at the time. In the interests of full and honest disclosure, I was also trying to make my life easier, since it was difficult to stay at school to use their computer when I had a new baby at home and no money for daycare. [No money to be having a baby either, I know, I know. I was 24, what can I say?]
I am not usually one for the speedy decisions, but I made this one in record time. I saw the future, and I did not want my son [okay, or myself] to miss a moment of it, because even then, it was clear that computers were going to be a revolutionary tool. So before he could even crawl, he had a computer waiting for his eager fingers to start tapping the keyboard.
It was an Apple IIc, cutting edge back then, a sophisticated upgrade from the stodgy IIe, and the first "portable" computer. Well, if, by portable, you meant you wanted to pick up and move the combined keyboard/integrated 5.25 inch floppy drive unit, the shockingly heavy but state of the art color monitor, and the additional external floppy drive you needed to efficiently run a program, all of which took up the entire desktop, even without the printer. Looking back, it seems silly to call that portable, but at the time, mainframes were still occupying large rooms at major universities, and the personal computing revolution was in its infancy, with the future on the horizon, but still cloudy.As I was making the decision about which computer would take us through the next 20 years [yes, kids, I really thought that,] Apple was just about to come out with a new model, an upgrade of the original Macintosh, which had everything integrated into one compact unit. I vividly recall the salesman telling me that the horrendously expensive Macintosh was a passing fad, and we would be better off sticking with the II series, which was a proven winner. I hope that guy never played the stock market, because he would be throwing his money away, based on that track record.
Until then, monitors were tiny little green screens, flickering eerily in your face. They were hard to read, and gave you eye strain when you spent too much time in front of them, hypnotized by that flashing cursor. The newly released color monitor, a major upgrade Apple had just released for the II series, cost a lot more, but enhanced the experience enormously. That was one enhancement I couldn't live without, and probably delayed our next computer decision by several years.
There was a variety of software available for the IIc already, and more being released all the time, especially when color monitors came into being. It spoke the ProDos language, and it was easy and fun to program it to do simple tasks, but even then, computer people spoke a language all their own. Fortunately, you never needed to speak a single command in order to put your IIc to good use. I blame AppleWorks, which came with a rudimentary spell check, for sending the nation rapidly down the path to illiteracy.
I still have that computer system, by the way, and it still works. I pulled it up not too long ago, and everything clicks along just like clockwork, with nary a blue screen of death to be seen.
You could technically connect to a modem back then, but the functionality was limited, consisting mostly of university discussion boards and gaming opportunities. In those early days, the internet we take for granted was the stuff of science fiction, and required some technical knowledge to navigate. The World Wide Web seemed a million years away to most of us, if we thought of it at all - I would have openly scoffed if anyone had projected how it would look in ten short years. The genius of people like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Steve Case was not just in the nuts and bolts of the machinery, but in having the vision to see the possibilities, if they could put a computer into the hands of ordinary people.
Ten years later, around 1995, we had been left behind in the computer revolution, and we finally upgraded to a fancy Gateway desktop PC. The day the boxes arrived, with their black spots on the white background, was more exciting than Christmas. We pulled each new piece from it's packaging, thrilled with the possibilities just waiting for us. The charts and instructions were complex, but fortunately, with some natural mechanical ability, I was able to put it all together, and we were once again part of the modern world of computing.
It was amazing, the power and speed of that new computer. Windows 95 made it simplicity itself to work with. We were wowed by all the bells and whistles and everything it could do, so much more than the faithful old Apple. Then, at long last, we joined the online universe by signing up for AOL dial-up service.
For people used to instant everything, AOL dial-up is a quaint recollection, the pinging, the dinging, the anticipation of when it would finally go through, and you would be in touch with the outside world from inside your own home. In retrospect, I think we must have been early devotees of the internet, but at the time, it seemed like we were the last people on the planet to get online, and it opened up the whole world to us. It was awe inspiring, at least for me [I can already see my daughter smirking and hear my son saying, "Oh mom...,"] to realize that we were on the same internet that people were using on the other side of the world, and although that seems like provincial thinking now, it was mind bending then, because it was all so new.
E-mail was my favorite thing about the internet back then - instead of waiting days to hear back from someone, it would be a few hours, and their reply would be in your inbox the next time you signed on. Suddenly, I joined the social universe; "You've Got Mail" was not just a great movie [still my fave,] but personal and real.
Then I discovered Instant Messaging, chatting in real time, which was even better. For someone who hates the phone, and would rather write my thoughts than talk about them, IM was a life changing development.
Since those early days, we have upgraded many times. Computers are faster, smaller, and better all the time; these days we have five computers for the three members of our family, all in use for different things at the same time. Ironically, although I love my little laptop for its genuine portability, I prefer my desktop for working day to day. As they get smaller they get cheaper, making them available to more people all the time, expanding the cyberworld while shrinking the real one.
Computers have become one of the most powerful tools of our day - we work on them, we use them for school, we communicate with them, we play on them, they provide us with everything from advice to entertainment to conversation to support and when we are without, it becomes as much of a crisis as losing any other vital piece of our daily lives.
It has been an unbelievable transformation in only 25 years - from being one of the first people I knew to even have a home computer to everyone having one, and being connected all the time. It has been as revolutionary as the invention of the car or the telephone or the light bulb. While as a child I had a hard time imagining a world without indoor plumbing or the television, my own children would not recognize a world without cyberspace.
I am grateful for the online world, because it allows me to work from anywhere. This past week, I sat in a parking lot to check my e-mail between appointments during my working day. My office is located inside my laptop, and I have everything I need at my fingertips wherever I am, at any moment of the day or night. I am able to respond to urgent messages and phone calls immediately, even when I'm not at my desk, because my voice mails are online, and my e-mail is waiting whenever I want to pull it up. Instead of making my clients come to me, I can make house calls and offer them the personal service I prefer, but never be out of touch with what is going on back at the office.
That same connectedness applies to my personal life, as well. I can talk to people who are hundreds of miles away any time I want to, and we know what is going on in each other's lives in a way that would be impossible without the instant communication the internet affords us. I can chat with everyone from my mother to an old friend from high school, and be a part of their lives without ever leaving my home in Kansas. I can communicate with someone in Asia in an instant of time, and know what is going on there through the unfiltered words of a live person, instead of the media or their government's official statements.
Twitter may have influenced events in Iran, and China, for all it's efforts, may not be able to raise the bamboo curtain again on its people, when those people have cell phone internet service even in the furthest reaches of the globe. The internet is everywhere, and for better or for worse, it is changing everything we do. From daily life, to politics to global awareness of disaster, the internet is ever present, giving us unlimited insight and information, if only we are willing to open our browser and look.
One of the interesting things about approaching my 50th year of life is the more informed perspective I now bring to the table. I have an awareness of the world's transformation, and it is stunning to see how things have changed in so short a time. The world has gotten smaller as the internet has gotten bigger, and it's been amazing to be a part of it, no matter how insignificant my part may be. I can only wonder what is ahead in the next 25 years, and how our world will transform again in ways that we can't even imagine now. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the journey.
