When did you first hear about the internet?

[Andrew T]

In the early '90s, I watched the TV show Newton's Apple regularly on PBS. Ordinarily, there was a brief interlude in the middle of the show where an address to write to was shown on screen. In 1993 or 1994, however, they began to announce that in addition to conventional mail, "Now, you can send us e-mail at the University of Minnesota." As such, this was the first time I had heard of e-mail and, as such, an aspect of the Internet.

The world wide web I heard about several months later through a combination of hearsay and miscellaneous media, although it's harder for me to pin down the exact moment.

I first accessed the Internet (or specificially, the web) in 1995 at the library of a local college, on one of several 486-based computers with Windows 3.11 and Netscape Navigator 1.0. I also remember the first website I visited, which was Yahoo!. Their logo was very different back then.

The rest, you could say, is history.

 

[BEAR]

The other day I asked my dad how long the internet has been around. I think he said that it has been around for quite a while, but it was only used by the government long before it was available to the rest of us.

 

[ryhoyarbie]

I think I first heard about the internet in 96.

ryan

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I had heard about it for years, but then I was house-sitting for a friend and she set me up on AOL with a screenname while I was there for the week. She helped me make a profile and showed me how to use the chatrooms.

Well, while I was talking my first ever Instant Message popped up and asked me, "What kind of stories do you write?" That freaked me out because I didn't understand it and how it was happening, who it was, and yet there it was.

Obviously now I'm not so freaked out by internet tricks.

 

[ceecee]

I first heard of the "Information Super Highway" in 6th grade ('92-'93). We would watch these current event film strips (some of you youngin's may not even know what those are!), and one day there was this thing about the Information Super Highway. I thought it was some far off thing that really didn't mean a whole lot.

Then in about 9th grade ('95-'96), I really started hearing about it on the news and things. Started hearing about e-mail, and the world wide web, still not knowing what these things meant.

A few years later, I watched a friend go online at school (on the one computer we had with internet - and yes, you had to sign up for it in advance). It took forever to get on, and it was really slow. I remeber being completely bored by it.

 

[ReneeLouvier]

I first learned about the internet in '91, I was still too young to fully understand what it was (I was only 5 or 6 at the time) But my Mom went back to college a couple of years later, and a friend of her's gave her a computer with a 24kbps modem hookup. It only really went to the University's internet, so Mom could get her homework.

Then we got another computer, with a 56kbps modem, and dial-up service. I remember the very first thing I searched up was...no lie...Jim Henson. I found some Muppety website, I forgot what it was though...

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I don't know? Something to do with Compuserve or Prodigy...