Your First Experience Communicating On A Computer?
Talking to clients and fellow social media enthusiasts has forced us to think harder about the nature of communication. What goes into encouraging discourse amongst people with very different relationships? From business <-> customer to collegaue <-> colleague. My brain wandered to internet communication at its base and how it all started for me.
What were some of your first experiences communicating over a computer?
My story starts a lot later than some being in my mid twenties. There was a Hewlett Packard 386 sitting on my family’s kitchen table. The 2400 baud modem connected to the Prodigy online service. It was a frustrating experience, a lot of dialing and busy signals. When it worked it really drew me in. There were message boards where I learned a lot about music. It is interesting to think about now because in the early days people were just figuring it all out before everyone was fully concious of the reletive anonyminity things like chat rooms and messages boards gave you. Everything was very friendly. I would play checkers against people one winter during snow days and thought that was the most amazing thing.
One of my good friends who would grow up to start JCHost (the fantastic web host of Ideas and Angles) ran a small BBS that you dialed into through telnet. Call back verifiers, door games, and everything. The whole process was fascinating to me but not everyone shared the feeling. I got on the phone and called my friend asking him if he wanted to chat online, he laughed at me for calling him to chat. Some of those early experiences were the start of a life spent online.
What is your story? Any Gopher or Telnet stories? How did it all start for you?
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Tags: Communication, Old Days, Prodigy
Feb 04, 2009
my first experience with communicating on a computer was calling up local bulletin board systems (BBS) here in kc chatting with others in the area, posting on usenet boards, and being a minor trying to social engineer onto the adult sites
Of course in the 90’s the internet started popping up and then it was onto telnet, irc, and email using pine.
ahhh the memories
Feb 04, 2009
Mine are much later in deed. I remember in Elementary School playing such games as Oregon Trail and having some very basic learning games like Number Crunchers. I had on old DOS computer I played Qbert on at home. Really when I started using a computer on a regular basis, it was through AOL and using the instant messenger service and the chat rooms. I was completely baffled by the idea of being able to filter through people by selecting criteria from their profiles in order to contact people through instant messaging. Facebook now takes that to an incredible new level, but the same principles. Weird to think about.
Feb 04, 2009
My dad brought home a Mac one day. I used it to play “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego.” I remember we used AOL and had to dial up with that obnoxious connection noise.
My friend Darren Zarter taught me what an e-mail address was and we e-mailed about stuff like cartoons and Mrs. Smith’s 5th grade class. Then froke out when we discovered Instant Messenger. That was 1994-1995. Got in trouble for going over on our monthly minutes.
Feb 04, 2009
Ha, I remember getting trouble for minute usage. I had forgotten all about that.
Feb 04, 2009
In the early ’90s, I remember going on the newsgroups immediately after each episode of “The X Files” ended to see what people had to say about it.
I also remember first goofing around with AOL on my Mac SE/30. Random strangers would initiative chats and quickly get creepy. I’m glad Twitter hasn’t gotten that way…yet.
Feb 04, 2009
I remember dialing into the modem pool at KU, AOL and MetroBBS. Online games were all text based. exciting!!!
Feb 04, 2009
In the late ’70s trying to use punch cards and Fortran to get a plotter to draw for me. A friend tried to convince me it would be EASIER than drawing everything by hand (I was a graphic design major and CAN draw). Professor told me computers would never be used in the design process and I should abandon this waste of time.
I have since taught computer graphics at Ohio State and currently own a marketing communications firm with LOTS of computers…
Feb 04, 2009
I remember very clearly the first time “communicating”. I would always see all the numbers in the back of the Computer User Paper with all these free “bulletin boards”. I didn’t know what they were, but I figured that they had to talk to my computer somehow.
The only program that I knew that could dial out was this program called Windows Terminal in Windows 3.1. It was a great tool for pranking people! That was the only thing I knew how to do at the time with it. You’d put their number in, it would dial it, you’d hear them talk over the modem speaker but they couldn’t hear you and you could just laugh all day long. My friends found it amusing.
Except this time I wanted to put one of these numbers in from the Computer User paper to see what would happen. I typed in one of the bulletin board numbers which said “free” in the description, clicked connect, the phone dialed, and I heard all these amazing noises. They stopped and it said “connected 2400 baud”. Immediately my screen began filling with mostly garbage, but some readable words.
I was hooked.
I soon learned that I needed ANSI term client to convert those unreadable garbage characters into graphics and started using various other BBSes.
I guess the first time I communicated with another person was to “chat with the sysop [system operator of bbs]“. I told him how much his BBS sucked and why even bother running it if it was soo slow and crappy. I guess he didn’t like what I was telling him as he told me he was going to call my parents. Of course this happened as soon as I hung up. The time: 2am. Damn caller id.
I started using The File Shop BBS around 1994 or so I think it was. It was there that I could drop to a Unix shell from a bulletin board door on the BBS, and I would then IRC onto efNet and hang out in the #kansascity channel and various other channels, music genres or bands that I had an interest in. I remember how amazing it was to be able to converse with people from across the world without paying anything for it other than connection time.
I remember my dad was always impressed when I would tell him I was chatting with my friend from sweden, or turkey or some other far away place that at the time people thought you could only talk to by snail mail or telephone.
Eventually, Windows 95, the web, and ICQ caught on and the rest is history.
Feb 04, 2009
Mine was on AOL chat. I accidentally chose the phone number with the 9600 baud modem and was stuck with that for a week until I figured out what the heck I was doing.
Feb 04, 2009
My first taste of a social networking experience came when I used the virtual pet site Neopets back in elementary school, I kid you not because while it is such a kiddy site it is a good way of getting kids into social networking without many of the same risks that Facebook and MySpace have. Neopets allowed me to send PMs, chat on forums, make guilds or groups with other members, and host community events.
Feb 04, 2009
Sixth grade computer science class on the Commodore 64 sticks out in my memory. Not for sure it was the first time using a computer, but it was the first time I actually did something creative on a computer (even if it was programming in basic!)
Feb 04, 2009
I remember when I let Zach use my swbell.net dial up service (501-0005 I even remember the dial in number pretty sad I know). That was back when you had a set number of hours you could be online for sort of like cell phone minutes now. Zach left his computer online for a week or so and ran up a 380 dollar bill. Those were the days.
Feb 04, 2009
Side note: Zach did not do this intentionally and I actually got the overage refunded.
Feb 04, 2009
That goes back a bit. 300 baud acoustic coupler attached to a bare-board Ohio Scientific “Superboard II”, talking on Cleveland Forum-80.
Feb 05, 2009
James and I did do some serious dial up internet action that landed that huge bill for only one month. Good ol days!
Feb 05, 2009
Anyone remember CompuServe? Oh yeah — those guys. In middle school I had a Commodore VIC-20 computer and a really funky 300-baud modem — you had to use your phone to call the data number, then physically disconnect the twisty handset cord from your phone and plug it into the back of the modem…
So I did that. A lot. Living in Warrensburg at the time, I figured out how it was cheaper to call CompuServe’s Topeka, Kansas dial-in number instead of the one in Kansas City, Missouri (note to newer generations: they actually used to bill less money for out-of-state calls, go figure).
Dad got my $300 phone bill that first month and about had a fit! I’m glad I was able to work it off and he didn’t put a lien on my computer…
Feb 06, 2009
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Feb 08, 2009
In 1971, the summer before starting my Senior year in high school, I went on a career camp with 4-H to the University of Missouri in Columbia. All my friends went on to tour the Agriculture Department but I went alone to see the computer department. I was impressed by the computer and the big room it needed with all the special environment required to keep this room cooled down. I was impressed but my thoughts at the time were I’ll never be able to do anything like this.
A couple of years later I was working for a land surveying company on one of their field crews. I took an opportunity to transfer to the office as as drafter and began working on calculations to reduce the survey notes and learning how to make the numbers fit. The company had a big contract to locate all of the section corners as part of the new lake planned at Smithville, MO. The survey company’s owner bought a paper tape teletype machine and I began working through a dial-up connection to McAuto which was McDonnell Douglas Automation system.
My first experience at communicating on a computer was entering coordinate geometry (COGO) data as survey point coordinates and directional vectors. This data was typed as holes punched in paper tape then dialing up the service to load the tapes.