Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Jan 10, 2007

Thinking Out Loud: A brief history of online

As I compose the first draft of this musing, I’m sitting here in front of the computer not able to get online. This is a novel experience to someone whose email is usually trickling in 24 x 7, and brings to mind once again how utterly dependent I, and presumably a horde of other people, have become on my box of tricks for communication with the outside world.

So far today I have achieved the opening of mail, the fighting with of the printer, and three hours of catchup on my household accounts, which allowed me to clear something off the to-do pile that I’d been ignoring, because there were more pressing things to do online. I can only conclude that turning off the web allows for the free flow of administravia.

I remember the first time I got online. A rather forward-thinking professor at Lancaster University gave any of his French students who wished it an account on the university mainframe. There was a French-language bulletin board that we could use for communication, reading and chatting. It was brilliant. We learned French, and became good little computer addicts as we discovered that our French-speaking boards were not the only ones we could play upon. We learned of the existence of a wonderful entity called Email, followed shortly by the resident MUD game, live chat, and even scary international IRC (that felt too much like playing with the big kids). That’s when it really got fun, and when I got the first inkling that there was such a thing as Online Community.

One by one I met the people I corresponded with as we bumped into each other in the different labs. I spent almost all of my social time in the final year in those labs, even meeting some of the “CompSci” students who let me in on the key code to the big computer center. We would order pizzas by the dozen, and eat them while tapping away at our computers. (Not much has changed. I ate leftover pizza at my keyboard as I tapped away at this writing.)

I collected and tried to read the computer manuals, drawn by some unknown force to the computers and fascinated by them, but they seemed utterly impenetrable, a foreign language in and of themselves. If I’d found a teacher at that stage, when my mind was still young and very, very supple, I might possibly have taken a very different path in life. But my wyrd led me down different roads: I see the beauty of computers as communications tools, and get a thrill of satisfaction when my programs actually work, but could never see the beauty of the code itself.

Knowing how addictive this whole computer thing could be, my first husband and I agreed not to get online until we could afford it. Back then in the UK you paid your local calls by the minute, and that could become pretty expensive. But we were hooked up by 1995, I think, using Netscape 2.0. We were among the first of my circle of acquaintance to have the internet, and I was probably among the first users at Demon Internet to take advantage of their free web hosting package. When I moved to the USA, having met my second husband online, I bequeathed my computer and a set of instructions to my parents so that we could stay in touch.

But now…it’s different.

But now…it’s become overwhelming.

Being quite an introvert, and shy as well, I thought the net was great. I could communicate online with great openness, unafraid to share of myself, not having to worry about blushing and not finding the right words or being interrupted by louder, pushier people. There was no need to be tongue-tied online. Every so often, though, I would get burnt, putting my trust where it did not belong, and it’s got to the point now where I share very little of what is typically considered “my private life” online. I think that it is sad. The more of us there are online, the less of an intimate group it can be; while you can still find that kind of togetherness and community in topic-specific forums, but what I loved about those early days was the inclusivity of it all. Arts students and tech students would hang out together and have a whale of a time.

As we’ve moved towards an electronic world, when I lose my connection for a while I’m torn between irritation and surprise at how much other stuff I’ve got to be going on with and had somehow contrived to forget. I know that when we lost our high-speed internet for ten days (bravo, AT&T!) I got more writing done than I had in months. I used to write to about 60 penpals: no more. I typically receive around 100 emails a day — it’s all too much. I’ve unsubscribed from e-lists and forums, feeling like I’m somehow failing because I can’t keep up and remember to go to all those different sites.

So, I think that every so often I’ll pretend that I don’t have the internet, and go do something different. That way, when I do come and hang out in online-land, I will be refreshed and not feeling guilty about not doing my housework or filing or whatever it is that I wasn’t doing. And then I’ll send an email or two, and make an appointment to see my septuagenarian author friend for lunch, or say hello to my parents in Scotland.