How long have you had access to the Internets?

[intheflow]

Poll question: How long have you had access to the Internets?

I first had access to the web in 1995. My state-of-the-art computer didn't have a mouse, and the web was text only. I remember playing a game that MIT had up on their website where you navigated a virtual dog through the streets and T-system of Cambridge. One day my boss came in and told me her 15-year-old computer whiz kid told her to buy start-up stock in something called "Yahoo" because it was going to make millions. We all laughed.

So how long have you been surfing?

*Edited to add "Other" option since so many early responses indicated longer than 11 years in the private sector.

[WCGreen]

1. 1995 Here.

Didn't like it at firstand then came back in 1996

[Maddy McCall]

2. I didn't work in defense or ed, but I had the internets back in the late..

eighties. (Department of Transportation.)

[trackfan]

3. I think it was July 7, 1995 n/t

[Fescue4u]

4. late 92

Tried to get on earlier than that but commericial ISPs were rare and generally you had to buddy up with a University (of which I had been out to long for :)

Our first corporate internet connection was 56k line serving about 2000 employees :)

[Oerdin]

7. I first logged into the net in 1993.

My high school teacher got us free dial up accounts which were provided as a public outreach program by the defense contractor General Dynamics which was a big local employer. Back then I remember mostly using FTP and usenet/uunet.

Before that, starting around 1986, I would login to several of the dozens of local BBSes on my trusty C64 using first a 1200 baud then later a 2400 baud and finally a blazingly fast 12240 baud modem. Graphics were strictly ASCII, games consisted of things like Trade Wars, while the forums consisted many of spam and the odd political thread. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

One of my good friends got AOL in 1991 right after the first gulf war and I was really jealous because AOL had the first decent online game in the form of the AD&D game Neverwinter Nights. I was 14 or 15 at the time so I didn't have the cash to pay the per minute charges and my father insisted on using only Prodigy since they charged a flat monthly fee instead of per minute charges; not that I got to use his IBM and instead stayed on my trusty Commedore.

[puerco-bellies]

10. 92 or 93 for me

Everything was text. To e-mail you had to use a unix based program, I think it was called v-1 e-mail editor though I was still smoking pot back then so don't quote me. Just to backspace was a codefest (at least for me). To view images I had to go to a computer lab on a campus. Ahh those were the good ol' days, up hill, in the snow, both ways to and from school..

[intheflow]

24. I remember unix!

I used that around the same time I first got to play online, but the unix computer was a group computer at work and I think it was just a local network. At least, I don't remember talking to anyone outside of my department. I thnk v-1 sounds about right, too. But you know, I was also smoking a lot of pot back then, so... :smoke: :crazy:

[Xithras]

5. IIRC, Internet has been publicly available since 1988(?)

I know I got my first shell account in September 1989, my first email account in 1990, I saw the WWW for the first time in 1992, and by 1994 I had my own consulting company (building web interfaces for COBOL and C systems in Delphi...blech).

[Beware the Beast Man]

6. I first logged on to Telnet in college, in 1994.

Back in those days, even the CIS Computer lab on campus had only one computer with Netscape on it. And we had to sign a form and wait in line to watch a page load for 30 minutes and WE LIKED IT! :D

[Chovexani]

36. LOL

MUDs were my gateway drug to the internet. I remember all the nerds at school fighting over the one computer that had Mosaic on it, but as long as I had Telnet I was fine. :)

[AndyTiedye]

8. Since It Was Called the Arpanet, and I Was At MIT

1973

[intheflow]

28. Wow.

Were you a student at MIT at the time, or teaching?

And though it was 20 years later, do you know the dog game I used to play down in the early 90's? I've been trying to think of that stupid dog's name for years. I want to find the game again in the Wayback Machine.

[AndyTiedye]

30. I was a student. Class of '74

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. I'm new to the internet...

I didn't have internet access until 2002..when my little brother put together my first computer out of old parts that he wasn't using any more...

It got a virus and I needed more memory, so last year I upgraded all of it, and now am set for the forseeable future...

Ah, and how I love surfing the net!

:woohoo:

[miss_kitty]

11. January 2003

that's when i got the computer. But i'd tried it at the library. I had dial up and AOHell. But that's all changed. :)

[Ladyhawk]

12. Which Internet?

:silly:

[LeftyMom]

13. '96 I think?

We had fiberoptic and spiffy new Macs at school, at home I had a Packard Bell 486 with a 14.4 modem and an AOhelL account. I used both constantly, the school connection for research for my extracurriculars and just exploring, home mostly for chat rooms and other random silliness.

[BikeWriter]

14. About six years. I got online to research creative writing...

Yeah, right!

[enigmatic]

15. Since 1995

I acually had one of the first webtv boxes; it was great just for pure surfing on my 25 inch tv. I got a real PC in 98, but the first few years on webtv I remember with fondness.

[mvd]

16. I think it was 1997

I remember going to Windows 98 soon after going online.

[AlienGirl]

17. Since 1993

I guess that's quite a while.

Tucker

[Greyhound]

18. OG, here. Any details, and I'd be forced to kill you. n/t

[6000eliot]

19. 1990 or so.

I'm in education.

[stlsaxman]

20. I had the first version of Mosaic on my brand new Mac Plus...

before that i had a shell program that got me onto something called the world-wide web.

i used to log on thru wustl.edu to get to my website on the Boston Freenet...

[Chovexani]

35. Oh man that's pretty cool

My school didn't get Mosaic for a little while after that...I remember trying to run it on the Mac Color Classics we had. And then we got a spanking new Power Mac 7100/77 with a huge screen and all us nerds fought over it, hehe.

[supernova]

21. Since about 87 or 88

We had just bought our first computer. We got, through a friend, an early beta copy of AOL.

[distantearlywarning]

22. Didn't work in education or defense, but

used to log onto a BBS called Quartz out of Rutgers University. This was in 1992-1994. It wasn't the "Internets" as we know and love them today, but nevertheless counts, I think.

[In_The_Wind]

23. March 2002

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. First sent e-mail in the early 1980s using Plato, which was

Control Data's educational network. They set up access at a number of colleges around the country, especially in Minnesota, where they were headquartered. I used it to correspond with grad school friends around the country. Then there was about an eight-year gap.

My first experience with real Internet e-mail came in 1992, when I was still teaching but transitioning out of academia by working on editing a textbook. I corresponded with the author of the textbook in my college's computer lab and used my department's one desktop Macintosh SE after hours to do my editing work.

Before my teaching career ended in 1993, I bought a Mac LC III through the college bookstore and signed up for AOL. I think I first used a Web browser (Mosaic) the following year, but my computer was too slow (and had only 4MB of RAM) to make Web surfing practical.

I first used a computer in 1979, when Yale announced this revolutionary pilot program: Graduate students who applied would be given computer time to word process their dissertations at the computer center on a terminal of the mainframe using WScript, a program that required you to input all the commands as dot commands. Then you had to send it to the main printer and line up at the window to get a dot matrix printout of your chapter.

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. The Internet, since 1994 or so.

Back in the days of Netscape 1.0-2.0, grey backgrounds, few images, 14.4 modems, and search engines that boasted "Now Indexing Over 2 Million Web Pages!"

BBS and online services since the early '90's. Lot of (relatively) "early adopters" here, looks like...

[barb162]

27. The internet: way over 10 yrs. The Internets: no time at all

[hyphenate]

29. I've been online since 1988

but not for the reasons cited. The earliest BBS I was on was Compuserve when it was a text interface. There also were multi, multi BBS systems around the world at the time, but no other national service at that time. After Compuserve, I was into Prodigy for several years, but found the interface irritating as they had ads on every page. Around 1992 or 1993 I got onto AOL and have been a subscriber for a very long time only because my email address has remained steady that whole time. Now I access it only for email.

[intheflow]

43. Prodigy Flashback!

I completely forgot I had access to email before 1995! My mother (in Massachusetts) and my sister (in Rhodie Island) both had Prodigy... must have been in '91 or '92, when I moved back in with my mother briefly after college. My sister and I did send some emails back and forth then, now that I think on it. I don't remember ever going on the Internet than, though.

Thanks for the memory. My sister died a couple years ago, that was a nice memory to flashback to. :)

[hyphenate]

45. Glad to oblige!

And BTW--Happy first DU anniversary today!

[intheflow]

50. Thanks!

I didn't even realize it was my anniversary! :D

[pdx_prog]

31. Telnet, Archie, Finger, Pine.....

Been a long time.....:)

[puerco-bellies]

49. Telnet, Archie Finger, Pine!! Wow Flashbacks`

Ooo, the colors..

[hunter]

32. I sent my first ARPAnet email in 1979.

Which means I've been "surfing" over twenty five years now.

Whew.

I don't have much to show for it -- just a sore butt and some very thick skin.

[northzax]

33. hard to say

the first time I logged onto a BBS? '87, I think, 8th grade. I've had a computer in my house, quite literally longer than a TV, got the computer in '83 (I was nine, handwriting was so bad the teachers wanted me to type everything. go Apple IIe! didn't get a TV or cable until the '84 games in Sarajevo.)

[Chovexani]

34. Since the late '80s/early '90s

I was way too smart for the entry-level bullshit they taught in computer class at school, so the head of the computer department used to let me and a few other nerd kids mess around online. We first got Mosaic around '93...only one computer had it, and we used to fight over it hehe.

One thing that annoys me is when people think the Web and the Internet are interchangable. They're not! Before we had Mosaic and years before we had MMORPGs, I was gaming on one of the first MUDs on Telnet back in '92 or so (Perilous Realms). I also played Gemstone on GEnie, and the original Neverwinter Nights.

Anyone remember Gopher? I used to spend hours on that too. :D I had to stop using BBSes from home though, as I used to rack up really horrid phone bills and my mom was none too keen about that. :evilgrin:

[Lowell]

37. Since the mid 70s

We used it as a secure means to transmit defense briefs from Germany to the United States. And visa versa.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

38. I can't really remember being without it!

[slackmaster]

39. My first use of the public Internet was email in 1994

Relayed through chatroom BBSs via dialup modem.

I was able to exchange messages with a friend who was deployed on the high seas on a research vessel for Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as several friends who worked for other academic institutions.

[bikebloke]

40. Since the mid 90's... perhaps

Whenever the Seattle public library made it available. I worked a couple blocks away, and would wander over on rainy lunch hours. Curious, I wanted to see what it was all about.

[leftofthedial]

41. I screwed up and said 7

I started on Usenet long before that, although not in the defense industry.

[Mutley]

42. 1996 here.

I had it off and on throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. I've had it consistently since 2002.

[Left Is Write]

44. About ten years.

I once flew to California to meet a guy I talked with on IRC.

[dhinojosa]

46. August 1990......at the university

it didn't have the name "internet" yet (I don't think). But I would download stuff and there were a few websites like wustl.edu (all the games were there) and university of minnesota. I used to use gopher a lot too, and email.

[all.of.me]

47. i got online in early 2000

[nookiemonster]

48. Long enough to remember using Compuserve and GEnie.

:silly: