Publishing Online
The Internet and I fall in LOVE…
by Paul Iacono
Paul Iacono 
The Internet and I fall in LOVE…
When I was in university in 1993-4, it was as a mature student to retrain in Technology/IT as I could see this was the way to go. I remember buying my first ever modem, an external 9,600bps dinosaur, that took me days to find the right settings for as the person who I'd bought it off had lost the driver floppy disk.
After days of messing around with modem baud rates etc. I got onto the internet and loaded my first ever page, it was my universities website. I was presented with a text only page black text on a white background, but my heart was beating fast and my palms were covered with the sweat of a young man beginning his initial journey into a new Love Affair.
It may sound ludicrous to you, but for me a self confessed bookworm from the age of 4-5 yrs old, this was heaven. No more would I have to go to the library looking through shelf after shelf, with my head tilted sideways reading the spines of musty old books, looking for one that caught my eye. This was an absolutely huge leap forward in the world of finding out specific, relevant, technical information required for a particular purpose.
The 9,600bps modem I used was so slow, that when I encountered a page that had more than 2-3 photographs, or complicated graphics, it took an age to download. I'm not talking of 10 seconds here; I'm talking of up to 1-2 minutes for some pages it was excruciating. So I learned to turn off the photographs from downloading automatically, and only loaded them when it was something I valued. Today I use a 16 Million Bits per Second connection to surf the Net, if you never used the internet in the old days, you don’t know how lucky you are.
Within a period of 2 years so many sites had sprung up, both in the commerce and the hobbyist/interest type of sites. It was so cool, I spent so much time just surfing the net, as there was always something new to blow your mind. Including my first real look at pornographic materials, as we in the UK had always been very much behind the rest of Europe/The World. Then all of a sudden, there were sites depicting any and all types of XXX rated materials some erotic, and some just plain nasty to the point it turned me off. But they were promoting that as the virtue of the internet, it provided EVERYONE with something they were interested in.
Then as far as I'm concerned came, the 2nd revolution of the internet. By 1998-1999 the largest companies decided it was time for them to really enter the internet in a big way, not just the Amazon Books, IT companies etc. Now it was time for every Tom, Dick and Harry to stand up and be counted. Everywhere you looked the advertisements on TV, Newspapers etc., now had www.XXX at the end of them, it made me smile. Only a few years before friends and family had told me they would NEVER use the Net, they said it was something for Tech Heads and Geeks only. Now they ALL wanted a piece.
After the Millennium Bug never happened, Bob the Builder, the shifty Real Estate Agents and little Johnny at home doing his homework ALL wanted to be on the internet to expand their horizons. I loved it, though my hands no longer sweated and the heart beat stayed the same, my enjoyment of the internet grew day by day. My business designing websites had 20 staff, huge offices in the city centre, and people looked upon me as a GURU. It was amazing.
Then the internet bubble burst as always happens when the stock markets get their grubby hands on these things. They had decided that every company that had the words internet or www in the title were valued vastly over the bricks and mortar values. No One had ever had to put a price on Virtual Worlds before, so how much does a ZERO and a number 1 cost these days then (Sorry for the Binary JOKE).
The fly by nights flew away and buried their heads in shame and bankruptcy, at my company we were lucky to go on as we still had some substance in our company and enough of our clients had been advised correctly to not put all the eggs in one basket. So we stepped carefully through the mire, and over the next 2 years things started to gain momentum again, with every business/individual wanting the Net again.
I skip ahead to now 2007, where the internet is a grown up marketing, e-commerce and communications tool of vast intrinsic value. We (Techies/Geeks) were vindicated because we were right; the IT guys from the 1990s weren't dreaming "Pie in the Sky" fantasies. We were trying to revolutionise the way we all do business. So look back just 10 years No More, to where it began, it is incredible how much we humans have advanced.
NOW Think ahead 10 or maybe 20 years where do we go from here, its so exciting, as every day something new is invented or released to market. The world has not gone mad; it’s just changed for the better if you ask me, as without the internet can you still imagine how difficult it was to communicate.
AS Now we can speak to a guy in Africa, a girl from China all at the same time, without the barriers of cost etc. restricting us. Soon they will put instant translation into our messaging software and the globe will really be a smaller place then.
I'll finish up (for now) with nothing spiritual, except to say that the real reason the Internet has changed is because WE the USERS of the Net demanded it. Faster connections, simpler access and content that is both useful and entertaining. So PEOPLE please keep changing and asking, probing and communicating with each other. Because this is the world’s Biggest change, we all talk with each other a lot more. My 65 year old Mum was quite lonely stuck in the house after retirement, now she is out and about travelling the globe seeing things and meeting friends she met on the Net. There are real benefits; people who are disabled can have 100 friends in an online chat room party, before they wouldn't see/speak to 100 people in a year.
Keep it up Guys n Gals, because the INTERNET Belongs to US ALL. We have a responsibility to use it in a way that helps the human race take the next step towards a world of peace and charity to our fellow men. Not the old fashioned world, with leaders who are greedy, ruthless and warmongers (You know who you are). Lets make them extinct not the good things this world has to offer.
Paul Iacono
Jun 23rd 2007 16:51
The Internet and I fall in LOVE…
When I was in university in 1993-4, it was as a mature student to retrain in Technology/IT as I could see this was the way to go. I remember buying my first ever modem, an external 9,600bps dinosaur, that took me days to find the right settings for as the person who I'd bought it off had lost the driver floppy disk.
After days of messing around with modem baud rates etc. I got onto the internet and loaded my first ever page, it was my universities website. I was presented with a text only page black text on a white background, but my heart was beating fast and my palms were covered with the sweat of a young man beginning his initial journey into a new Love Affair.
It may sound ludicrous to you, but for me a self confessed bookworm from the age of 4-5 yrs old, this was heaven. No more would I have to go to the library looking through shelf after shelf, with my head tilted sideways reading the spines of musty old books, looking for one that caught my eye. This was an absolutely huge leap forward in the world of finding out specific, relevant, technical information required for a particular purpose.
The 9,600bps modem I used was so slow, that when I encountered a page that had more than 2-3 photographs, or complicated graphics, it took an age to download. I'm not talking of 10 seconds here; I'm talking of up to 1-2 minutes for some pages it was excruciating. So I learned to turn off the photographs from downloading automatically, and only loaded them when it was something I valued. Today I use a 16 Million Bits per Second connection to surf the Net, if you never used the internet in the old days, you don’t know how lucky you are.
Within a period of 2 years so many sites had sprung up, both in the commerce and the hobbyist/interest type of sites. It was so cool, I spent so much time just surfing the net, as there was always something new to blow your mind. Including my first real look at pornographic materials, as we in the UK had always been very much behind the rest of Europe/The World. Then all of a sudden, there were sites depicting any and all types of XXX rated materials some erotic, and some just plain nasty to the point it turned me off. But they were promoting that as the virtue of the internet, it provided EVERYONE with something they were interested in.
Then as far as I'm concerned came, the 2nd revolution of the internet. By 1998-1999 the largest companies decided it was time for them to really enter the internet in a big way, not just the Amazon Books, IT companies etc. Now it was time for every Tom, Dick and Harry to stand up and be counted. Everywhere you looked the advertisements on TV, Newspapers etc., now had www.XXX at the end of them, it made me smile. Only a few years before friends and family had told me they would NEVER use the Net, they said it was something for Tech Heads and Geeks only. Now they ALL wanted a piece.
After the Millennium Bug never happened, Bob the Builder, the shifty Real Estate Agents and little Johnny at home doing his homework ALL wanted to be on the internet to expand their horizons. I loved it, though my hands no longer sweated and the heart beat stayed the same, my enjoyment of the internet grew day by day. My business designing websites had 20 staff, huge offices in the city centre, and people looked upon me as a GURU. It was amazing.
Then the internet bubble burst as always happens when the stock markets get their grubby hands on these things. They had decided that every company that had the words internet or www in the title were valued vastly over the bricks and mortar values. No One had ever had to put a price on Virtual Worlds before, so how much does a ZERO and a number 1 cost these days then (Sorry for the Binary JOKE).
The fly by nights flew away and buried their heads in shame and bankruptcy, at my company we were lucky to go on as we still had some substance in our company and enough of our clients had been advised correctly to not put all the eggs in one basket. So we stepped carefully through the mire, and over the next 2 years things started to gain momentum again, with every business/individual wanting the Net again.
I skip ahead to now 2007, where the internet is a grown up marketing, e-commerce and communications tool of vast intrinsic value. We (Techies/Geeks) were vindicated because we were right; the IT guys from the 1990s weren't dreaming "Pie in the Sky" fantasies. We were trying to revolutionise the way we all do business. So look back just 10 years No More, to where it began, it is incredible how much we humans have advanced.
NOW Think ahead 10 or maybe 20 years where do we go from here, its so exciting, as every day something new is invented or released to market. The world has not gone mad; it’s just changed for the better if you ask me, as without the internet can you still imagine how difficult it was to communicate.
AS Now we can speak to a guy in Africa, a girl from China all at the same time, without the barriers of cost etc. restricting us. Soon they will put instant translation into our messaging software and the globe will really be a smaller place then.
I'll finish up (for now) with nothing spiritual, except to say that the real reason the Internet has changed is because WE the USERS of the Net demanded it. Faster connections, simpler access and content that is both useful and entertaining. So PEOPLE please keep changing and asking, probing and communicating with each other. Because this is the world’s Biggest change, we all talk with each other a lot more. My 65 year old Mum was quite lonely stuck in the house after retirement, now she is out and about travelling the globe seeing things and meeting friends she met on the Net. There are real benefits; people who are disabled can have 100 friends in an online chat room party, before they wouldn't see/speak to 100 people in a year.
Keep it up Guys n Gals, because the INTERNET Belongs to US ALL. We have a responsibility to use it in a way that helps the human race take the next step towards a world of peace and charity to our fellow men. Not the old fashioned world, with leaders who are greedy, ruthless and warmongers (You know who you are). Lets make them extinct not the good things this world has to offer.
Paul Iacono
Jun 23rd 2007 16:51
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Comments
Paul,
I can really relate with you. My computer connections started back in the 1975 when I worked as a service rep for a 3M dealership. I was chosen to service and new Laser Beam recorder which wrote the computer data from mainframe IBM computers onto microfiche. We also had a 16 K computer with 4 huge Winchester Drives for storage to computerize access data and microfilm reels.
This machine cost our customers $225,000. And the company charged $57 per hour for me to service it. (I got about $8 per hour.
In the early 80's, I bought first a TI 99-4A and then a Commodore 64, hooked up a TV for a monitor and copied assembly coded programs out of "Compute" magazine. These programs did nothing except games and things like that. But we were learning.
In 1985, I bought my first XT clone, discovered that with my service rep background, I could build computers from parts and opened a business in this small town I live in. We had 20 mb hard drives, 640 K of ram a 5 1/4 floppy and we thought we had a system. Oh, I got $1400 when I sold one of these machines.
Why am I posting this? Just to let the younger genereation know what it was like in the "horse and buggy" days.
I remember reading in one of the journals about 1988 the predictions for what the computer of the future would be like and I could not fathom it. Why our storage systems were going to be up to 1 or 2 GB and our Memory was going to be way up there. There was no way anyone could ever use such power in a home computer.
Yeah, I have had a running love affair with computers for many years now also.
Unfortunately, I closed my computer business in 1994 and overnight I became obsolete in my knowledge and skills.
Interesting post, Paul, but now you and I have both dated ourselves and also, we labeled ourselves as the nerds and geeks we were.
Dave
Jun 23rd 2007 20:24