From modems to Wi-Fi
During my junior year of high school, students had a one-week class during study hall about computer hardware and software. The teacher did not mention web browsers and search engines. I haven’t heard of the World Wide Web or the Internet until I started my freshman year in college. This was a time when there were pay phones on campus, and many people had pagers instead of cell phones. For week three of my English 101 class, the professor told us to meet at the university library for an info session. The librarians spoke about using MetaCrawler on their Netscape Navigator to research information for term papers. The websites discovered during my first attempts reminded me of my old Atari ping pong game with the sticks hitting a circle. Many of them looked like a series of words written on a calculator. Any useful pages were only accessible from school because I didn’t have the internet at home. However by sophomore year, internet access was literally in the palm of my hand.
Among several articles of junk mail received one day at my first apartment was a CD-ROM from America Online (or as kiddies now know it: AOL) advertising a 45-day trial. I unplugged my phone and connected its line cord to my computer. Within minutes, my living room was filled the soon to be familiar sounds of a dial-up modem. I created an email address without knowing what electronic mail exactly meant. I perused chat rooms of interest and discovered instant messaging. I researched papers from home. Most importantly, I discovered a major hidden cost. I couldn’t use my phone while its cord was plugged into the computer. Any receiving calls automatically bumped me offline. Although I was aware of AOL’s hourly rates, I wasn’t aware of the additional phone charges. My usual $40 phone bill expanded to $120 most months.
A few years later, I ditched AOL when my phone company offered a DSL bundle. By this point, I went online using Internet Explorer to shop for books and read articles. I had a Hotmail account that I barely used because most of the mail received was spam. Readability of websites improved as pages included cleaner graphics and fonts. Instead of MetaCrawler, I used Ask Jeeves to look up random information. When I moved to an area inaccessible by DSL, I accepted a bundle offer with my cable provider for internet access. Pages that took 30 seconds to upload years before using dial up took less than five seconds. My phone bill dramatically decreased, but my cable bill rose.
These days, I have Wi-Fi access through my former cable provider and use Google as my go-to for any questions or research. My Hotmail account is long dead, but I use my current email for business and leisure (it has limited spam). The way technology evolved in the last five years is like a sci-fi novel or one of those old “world of tomorrow” cartoons. If I didn’t feel like driving to a relative’s house, I could “visit” via Skype. If I have an opinion, I could share it with friends and strangers on Twitter. I don’t need a computer to search the web because Google Chrome on my cell phone. High school junior me would’ve found all of this bananas. Today’s me can’t wait for the next technological wave.
