Hail the Internet

I just read an article about internet communities that got me thinking.

I remember when people thought there was something wrong with me when I sat at my keyboard typing away in chat rooms,posting on forums,and interacting with others toward common goals, using wit and strategy, in online games.

I remember a time when most of the people I know in person were not available online to chat with and did not use email.

I remember suggesting to bosses that I'd be more effective telecommuting only to be shunned. And I laugh, a few years later, as global corporate office policies are shifting, allowing and even requiring telecommuting.

Telecommuting is a green activity. In fact, so are many online engagements. Rather than getting in your car, a plane, or using paper (to send mail), we are able to live and work more efficiently via chats, blogs, emails, forums, and other interactive online communication methods.

In 1994, as I set up my first email account, through Earthlink/Mindspring out of the SF Bay Area, and started learning about MUDs, I felt my spine atingle with excitement at the implications of the internet.
I knew my life was about to change.
I saw the world changing as a new paradigm for communication and information sharing arose.

Always the girl spending hours and days in the library, her bed scattered with as many library books as was allowed, my first discovery of search engines was a major revelation.
I sat in front of my monitor for days on end, enamored with the search window, typing in words and phrases. I got a job at a non-profit organization as a grant researcher and writer in 1995 because of my confidence to find all the information I needed through online searches.

That was before Google! That was before there were dozens of links and pages for every possible word you can imagine. Back then, you could type in Friedrich Nietzsche and get a back door link to a file list page for some university professor.
Now, type in Friedrich Nietzsche and there are hundreds of pages of information about this illustrious historical figure.

I can even type in my name and find at least a dozen solid links to sites with information about me. In 1995, the amount of information available online was a tiny tiny fraction of what there is today.
It's amazing and glorious.
Happily perched in the splendid privacy of my own home, the knowledge hungry girl that I am can always find answers to her questions at the tap of a few keys. It's marvelous!

I remember when Google was started. It was somewhere in the late 90's and I was working in the heart of the tech industry in Northern California as a video game producer.
A giant company bought out the smaller company I worked for,and I'll never forget that day. My boss, one of the founding partners of our small company, found out that he was fired by the corporate giant that bought us by noticing that his vacation and sick pay was included in his paycheck that week. It was an early Friday afternoon. Some of us were play testing Acheron's Call, while others were touting the superiority of Ever Quest (I'm in the Acheron's Call is better camp). My boss walked over to me (my desk was closest to his office and this resulted in spontaneous walk ups in which he'd confess something or share a tidbit of the game industry history or let me in on a secret), his face looked seriously pale and confused. He handed me something, a piece of paper. I took it. It was a paycheck. The dollar amount was six figures. It was pay to the order of my boss. The payroll name of the corporation was on the check. I looked at him, confused. It wasn't sinking in yet. Telephones all around us were ringing like they'd never done. I heard loud murmurings turn into yelling down the hall.
Dan looked at me steadily.
"They fired me. They let me know I'm fired through my paycheck."
He walked, zombielike into his office, started packing. I went in to help him.
"You're a champ,kiddo. You know that,right? I"ll give you a shining recommendation wherever you wanna go. Don't forget it", Dansaid to me.
I nodded,thanking him.
Two hours later he was gone. His office lights off. His desk and bookcase of cool and rare board games empty.
A month later I was gone, too.
We both went on to have great paying and rewarding jobs that employed internet technology. This period was huge. People left paper pushing desk jobs for internet based new worlds.

Most of the jobs I've ever had I got through the internet and/or used the internet to perform many if not all of the tasks of my job.

Most of the places I've lived I found out about through online searches.

Most of my friends talk to me online, and many of my social interactions occur through the internet.

I like this.
I'm a recluse and private person. I like to live in the middle of nowhere and I hate going out.
The internet allows me to reach out and socialize and interact with others without having to take a shower, squeeze into something cute, drive in my car and show up to spend money at some social place. I LOVE IT!

You can travel the globe in Google Earth. Have you tried that, yet? It's an awesome and free application with satelite generated images of the planet. Type in any address or city name and go!

I recently read an article by a guy who claims that internet socializing is a fake and liquid culture of dumbing people down and making them detached.
I couldn't disagree more. I feel more attached now, now that I have the internet, than I did when I did not have it.

It has been 14 years of my adult life that I have used the internet and nothing about my life would be as it is if it were not for this.

What is your experience of the internet? How has it changed or affected your life?

Do you recall a time when you didn't use the internet and remember the emergence of the internet in your life? When did you start using the internet and why?

How do you see the internet affecting or influencing your life in the future?

How do you see the internet affecting or influencing the world?

One thing's for sure: there's no denying the presence or power of the internet.