Do You Remember Your First Experience with the Internet?

Do you remember the first time you used the internet? I do.

I was thinking about it the other day, reminiscing about when it all started. It actually is pretty weird in a way. I had a computer at home, but it was used as an educational tool for my brothers and me. We had tons of math and word games that we would play all day. No internet of course.

It wasn’t until the summer of my freshman year in High School that I finally logged on to the internet. It’s odd that I remember it so vividly. It was June 1996, and I had a job as a Caddy at a Golf Club in Highland Park, IL. That summer, my place of residence was at Northwestern University in the suburbs of Chicago. I was staying in a College Co-Ed dorm as a freshman in High School!

It was fun to say the least, but that’s another story in its own. How this ties in is, my best friend that summer was a girl named Katie. Katie was a sophomore at Northwestern and took classes during the summer so she could graduate early. She was smart, but one of the nastiest people I have ever met in my life.

The only image that comes up when I remember her is her holding a beer and most of the front of her shirt being wet from spilling beer on herself. She was one of those people that couldn’t eat or drink without spilling something on her. It was weird as I am a very neat person, but I can be friends with anyone.

Katie would study all day. Drink and Party all night, and then hang out at a small computer room on campus and actually slept in there sometimes. I was always curious about the computer room, but I got up early in the mornings, and was normally tired from being on a Golf Course all day.

One weekend Katie said I should try the internet out, but it was best to go late at night as there were only 3 computers in the room, and during the day people were always on them.

I can’t tell you what type of computer it was, but the browser was Netscape and the Home Page was Yahoo! I didn’t know what the heck a Yahoo! was, but it had a list of everything that it could connect me to it seemed. The site looked nothing like Yahoo! looks today. It was a search box, some Yahoo! Icons, and a list in category fashion, like sports, cars, dating, and other stuff like that.

Turns out that Katie was always chatting on those late nights in the computer room, and I was a recruit to be her arguing buddy. I wonder if that chat site still exists. I can’t check it now as I am writing this from work. I would search for “Lil’ Chat Hotel” in Yahoo!, and I would know which one to click. The whole URL thing was foreign to me.

Katie and I started going to the computer room EVERY night, for hours chatting on this site. I couldn’t believe how fun it was, and somehow comforting. I guess that was my first experience with social networking in a way also. It also is what started my addiction to the internet.

Damn you Katie!!

Do you remember your first experience?

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Just Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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46 Responses to “Do You Remember Your First Experience with the Internet?”


Azh September 3rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm

I do…. it’s like remembering your first boyfriend, your “first time” and every other first lol

Peety September 3rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm

Oww I sure do..

Back then ICQ and IRC were the rulers of IM.

It is nice to reminisce about the past.. ;)

aburd September 3rd, 2007 at 4:31 pm

Honestly the first thing I did on the internet was troll AOL chatrooms. I went over to a friends house and he said something like “want to do something fun?” We opened up AOL and went to some chatroom. Then we began letting loose these wild barrages of insults at people. As I am already admitting that my first experience online was as a troll… I might as well also say that it was really really fun. I never really did it again but there is not denying that screeching out curse words in an AOL chatroom was a blast when I was 15.

Luka September 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm

saw your post on Pownce and thought I’d reply here.

I was in HS when I first got online - my sophomore year(93/94.) I was in the computer club, and after school we were allowed to access the internet. I got into a chat BBS called Wild Bills Watering Hole. It was totally text based and all sorts of fun. I don’t remember when we got the internet at home, but I know that my freshman year of college I got on ISCA another text based BBS, and spent like ALL my free time on there. After that year it was ICQ or AIM after ICQ blocked our schools single firewall. I started my first website in the fall of 97 and it morphed into a blog in Nov of 00.

Heidi Cool September 3rd, 2007 at 7:51 pm

I’m suddenly feeling very old. My earliest memories involve Unix based e-mail at school. This was later followed by Cleveland Freenet, telnet, Usenet News and the wonderful world of Gopher space. When I first saw the Web it was in the text-based browser, Lynx. I thought it was exciting enough that you could have links anywhere in the text instead of just in lists (like Gopher), but when I first saw Mosaic, complete with photos, I knew I was going to have to learn more about the http://WWW. And now, years later, I develop sites for a living. Who would have known?

Loren September 3rd, 2007 at 7:58 pm

Oh, the sound of a 56k modem dialing in, amazing.

Geoff Livingston September 4th, 2007 at 1:44 am

1995, I wrote an article on Mosaic for a magazine I was working for. It was the hip new thing created by this guy named Andressen.

Arthur September 4th, 2007 at 2:40 am

Heh, my first experience with the Internet was in 1988 using my Tandy Color Computer to send email to a friend over the Fidonet off a local BBS. One week later, and I got a reply!

I was a big user of Prodigy in the early nineties, and remember when I first got access to true internet content around 1994. I was still using BBS’s and ISP’s up until this point. Switched over to Delphi a few years later, and since then been using the “real” internet ever since.

Adrian September 4th, 2007 at 2:43 am

I can’t remember. I know my first time was seeing a computer. Floors upon floors @ IBM HQ in Hong Kong, all tape drives, the whirling sound and the noise. I was only four or five, so that would be 92? Mainframe for IBM networking. My first personal experience with computers were the old macs with Oregon Trail, an hour every week during elementary school, that was the best. But I do remember being that kid in sixth grade that hid in the library during lunch playing games online, then later getting a computer at home being a pirate. Arr.

coolass September 4th, 2007 at 2:43 am

It was 92 or 93, a friend showed me Mosaic, I tried to press the forward button to get to the next page, hypertext was new for me, to say the least… 8-)

Jason September 4th, 2007 at 3:15 am

My dad was a network engineer so we got internet at home before most people did. I was in the sixth grade or so and a very rich friend of mine had email already and had given me his address. My dad created an email account for me on his work network and let me send an email out to this friend. I’ve been hooked ever since.

oldtimer September 4th, 2007 at 3:16 am

I remember as early as 1996-7 somewhere in there using PINE for email and IRC. Then I think around 1998 or so was HoTMaiL. It was the weirdest thing to try and explain “no, really, your email is out there, from anywhere”

Derrick September 4th, 2007 at 3:54 am

I think it was 1997 when I was in school and someone was showing me how the search engine altavista works. Gosh that is a long time ago.

CommanderGoat September 4th, 2007 at 4:11 am

Good blog post!

My first time was around ‘92 or so. My dad worked for a local college and during the summer he would be insanely bored, so he would take me to work…lucky me. But one night he asked if I wanted to go to work with him the next day. He told me I could ’surf’ on the internet, and I had no idea what that meant. The next day I spent hours looking at movie rumor sites and I was amazed that I could find news on movies that hadn’t even been made yet. It was almost magical. But for some odd reason, that was the only thing I thought the internet was good for.

yeahh September 4th, 2007 at 4:34 am

Yeah remember I was back in 83-86 getting on bbs and stuff and always wondered how all those great games that were still in stores getting to my friends dads machines, spreung $40 for a 200 baud modem for my c-64. Later some one taugh me about pbx’s so i called bbs all over the world for free getting all kinds of stuff, the morphed over to the amiga and it was awesome, then mossaic came out for it but never got around using it much bbs had everithing so when the amiga died in the 90’s , switched to win 95 , and dialup was like 70$ for 33k, lol so back to the bbs, then moved to internet when all the cool online games started poping up, spcewar, doom quake, now I need someone to take me away from it!

Old Timer September 4th, 2007 at 4:47 am

Back in 1966 we used to send messages back and forth on the chatter roll using the MADNET terminals on AT&T’s long lines DIGInet. That was the real first Internet. You had both a form of e-mail and could query files to print using P/REC. We sent ASCII pictures of Christmas trees and betting pools for the World Series too.

Nice September 4th, 2007 at 4:55 am

what i started doing with Internet first is sending out mails and of course those lovely chat rooms… when we were bored and wanted to do something naughty I guess chat rooms was the best place lol ;)

sugarsharrk September 4th, 2007 at 5:04 am

My first time was about the same time as you, way back in 96. The first time I used AOL I was instantly addicted. I loved those AOL chat rooms. I still talk to this one guy I met back then (and “dated” even though he lived across the country). How fun. I don’t even know where I could find a chatroom now hehe…

mainemike September 4th, 2007 at 5:33 am

I remember signing up for CompuServe back in ‘93 or ‘94.
Film critic Roger Ebert had a forum on CompuServe, and I wrote to him a few times with questions about certain films and/or directors. He wrote back every time with a lengthy answer. Flash forward just a few years. Roger’s site is inundated with film geeks such as myself, his mailbox is overflowing, server is exploding, and he has to cherry pick his emails. The internet is still fun but perhaps not quite as intimate and clubby as it was back in the days when your average Jane or Joe had no real grasp of what a 28kbps modem was.

lovemyjeepyj September 4th, 2007 at 5:34 am

Caught the link from digg and had to post - i (being self absorbed) think my *first time* story is pretty funny. It was my second year in college - i am from the generation that use computers essentially as typewriters for most of the educational years. Anyway, second year college (I think; it was either 1996 or 97), a friend and i thought we would see what this whole “information superhighway” was about - so we pulled up the default search tool (sorry can’t remember what it was) and decided to “research” something. Suffering from performance anxiety we completely couldn’t decide what to look for. Stumped, we finally decided to do a search for my friend’s favorite band at the time.

My first internet experience involved a search for “Moist”. Sadly for us, net-nannys weren’t quite the rage they are now. The internet hasn’t changed much since then. I have however gotten much more specific with search terms.

virgil September 4th, 2007 at 7:04 am

I remember my friend had an aol account in 95 and we used it to chat online. Our version was 2.5 and I had an old 2400mbps modem, It took forever to do anything on that thing. I was hooked to chatting throughout high school. I also remember I was watching cnet and they talked about a new email provider rocketmail. I created an email account back in 96 and I still use that email today. I still have some old emails from 96 saved on it.

Save videos September 4th, 2007 at 7:06 am

My first experience is much different then most, since my first experience was when I was in elementary school, something like grade 5 or 6. No one had heard of the Internet, and e-mail was virtually unknown - yet I had one. I was using LYNX to use the Internet (so completely text-based) and PINE was my e-mail client. It wasn’t until something like high school that the Internet really became popular and huge, and by then most people had dialup..

joshzam September 4th, 2007 at 8:01 am

Excellent post. Very engaging.

I’m pretty sure I was introduced to the whole interwebs thing when I went to college in ‘94. Everyone was given an email address (mine was bd80866@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu) and I think it was the first year that all class requests were done “online”. I spent a lot of that year writing interpretations of They Might Be Giants songs with my roommate on the alt.music.tmbg newsgroup. I didn’t start html coding until ‘96. Ah, gray backgrounds and animated GIFs :)

Demonhill September 4th, 2007 at 8:28 am

My first is Apple .. err dunno what model is it Green colured monitor, It was back in primary school day when all my classmates love the computer class for playing ‘Olympic’ game, print postcard… and several years later i hooked up the first time, instantly i type ‘www.altavista.com’ in the address bar and type ’sexy picture’ at the search bar because my friend ask me to do so. So you guys know what got me hook up the next time…haha

DustyinBFE September 4th, 2007 at 9:25 am

My first “online experience” …. Summer 1994 … Prodigy. I was just about to turn 11 years old, and being recently displaced by the Northridge earthquake months prior and waiting for our house to be fixed, I discovered what was dubbed, “The internet.” And what was I to find? But chat rooms and porn! I was kept entertained the rest of the summer.
With my 40MHz 386dx2, 16MB of RAM, two 30MB HDD’s, all with DOS 6.22 running Windows 3.1, and the full immersion of 256 colors and the zooming speeds of a 2400 band modem… I was in pure bliss!
I hear BBS’s are still around in IP form these days???

Nays September 4th, 2007 at 10:55 am

Micro$oft Comic Chat. Good times!!

Cheeseburger Brown September 4th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

I remeber “The Spot”, a fake public diary site of six twentisomethings living together in LA — actually the brainchild of some sleazy advertizing agency trying to demonstrate the new and lucretive field of hoodwinking people via the Web.

Mark September 4th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

I’m not sure if I can remember the exact first time I used the interent but i do remember going on it at a musuem exhibit and then me and a school mate went to an internet cafe for some “high speed” access, which back then I think translated to 64k ISDN!! I remember that ended up costing us an arm and a leg (about £9 an hour if memory serves me correctly)

i then remember we had dial-up, then un-metered dial-up (no call charges for net access for fixed price) then broadband, which started at 512kbit and now sits at 4Mb (i could go to 20Mb but I can’t justify it enough to the wife!) happy days and fond memories of ICQ and various Yahoo chartooms :-)

BitSlicer September 4th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

I guess that I am an “Old Guy” on the internet. Back in the dark ages of 1985 I was working for a small computer company in New England. Some told me to use Golpher to down load a program that ran under X-11 Windows. It opened a whole new world for me. All of a sudden I could download programs from around the world.

As for the Web, I was surfing the internet in 1994 with Golpher and found a M/S Windows based program called WinWeb. I down loaded that program and for one of the few times in my life was in AWE! Got hooked and decided that life as we knew it was about to change.

Disturbed September 4th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Ummmm… my first experience?

I had used BBSes for a while because I bought my own modem.

My friend stole an Internet account for me to use and I installed all of the necessary software on my computer (a browser, a dialer, etc…) and was ready to go.

My friend showed me IRC chat and I was initially unimpressed. Eventually I saw the attraction and my first few times online someone on IRC sent me a picture of a naked little girl.

I told that person off and deleted the file.

WTF!?!

So yeah, my first experience with the Internet was theft and child porn… >_

cyberx September 4th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

What about Katie what happened to her? Do you still have her contact? Was she hot?? :) lol

Girl From Park Heights September 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

I remember.

I was 18 and freshman in college back in 1996. I went to the computer lab to try out this internet I’d heard about. I went to a ’search’ feature and typed in anything just to see what it would pull up. And dozens of websites came up. I tried something else, my favorite band at the time. Again, a multitude of info came rolling down the page. I was amazed. I tried several other topics and again tons of information. I was suppose to leave for work maybe 2 hours after that. I never made it. I couldn’t pull myself away.

Do You Remember Your First Experience with the Internet? « Drelle’s Weblog September 4th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

[…] read more | digg story Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized […]

bgarrett September 4th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Remember how low quality the images were? I went to wok the next day and told the old ladies that internet porn was terrible—————–the pictures were fuzzy!

james September 4th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

I remember my friend and I used to connect up to each other’s modem’s via some terminal client when I was running DOS 5. We had this program that ran in DOS called PowerMenu (odd how I remember the name.) that looked like a text based Windows. It had all of our installed applications available to go into with the keyboard (no mouse action on this proggy). Then I got into BBS’ing, and hooked up through a BBS called Monkey Barell to get out to the internet. We used Netscape and Trumpet Winsock! Good ol’ Trumpet!

Interneto September 5th, 2007 at 4:24 am

What is this internet you speak of?

Alastair_HM September 5th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

It was with Compuserve gad do you remember that.

J Devon M September 8th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Oh yah. I remember the 56K modem dialing in! Good times!That was in ‘97. And HotBot was my search engine I used before Google came in. Fortunately for me Dialup was unmetered.That is, if memory is serving me right. Later I got into Highspeed, and the rest is now history.

Geoff Livingston September 8th, 2007 at 6:17 pm

You really did well with this post, Howard. Way to go!

ob81 September 8th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

Thanks Geoff! I got all of my tips from your blog :D

Erica September 14th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

Despite being a ‘farmwife’ and mother of five, my mother defied any old-fashioned concepts attached to the term and as far back as I can remember we had a computer.
I was about 12 or 13 when we got online (94/95). For me, my first introduction to the ‘net came in spurts of 30 minutes per day - our limit per our rural provider. My sisters and I used Geocities to design our own websites, despite our text-based browser.
We especially enjoyed chatting with Americans and convincing them that we Canadians all lived in igloos and drove dog sleds to school…oh, wait, that was yesterday!
;)