Happy 40th Birthday to the Internet

I was reading that yesterday. It's amazing how the internet has personally changed my life, and also indeed the world we live in.

Damn! And all this time I've been giving Al Gore the credit!

In all seriousness, I agree with Tweety. I've met wonderful people I might never have met were it not for the ease of communication brought by the Internet.

i have such mixed feelings.

the internet is undoubtedly one of the most enterprising formations to have ever been created...
yet it is also one of the most frightening.

lots of vulnerable souls out there.
that can't be good, with all the twisted, warped minds as well.

yet the knowledge i've gained, and the folks i've 'met'...

we just need to destroy all the evil-doers out there, ok?

leslie

It is an interesting story - I was listening yesterday on NPR to interviews about this. No one thought, including IBM and others that this would go anywhere . . .the mainframes were HUGE.

I remember in college (1975 to 1977) I took a keypunch class . . the programs were written on these cards that stacked a foot high or more and were fed into computers that took up large rooms that had to be air conditioned in order to keep them from overheating. And my boyfriend, a computer science major, wrote programs in languages people have never heard of today.

Been amazing.

steph

Has it really been 40 years?

I remember hearing about BBS growing up, then discovering the internet in 1993. I spent the better part of two years solely on IRC before I realized there was more to the internet than that.

I once tried to take my poor little computer at home online. 1mb of RAM, 20mb hard drive, and a modem that got 2400bps if I was lucky--I usually had to settle for 1200. Nevermind that it kept disconnecting since everyone was constantly calling my sister.

That lasted a week, and it was no surprise that I lived in the computer labs at school.

I have (and still do) meet lots of fascinating people online--several of which have become good friends.