CNN and missile attacks in 1991. My first understanding of the potential of the Internet.

[kwassa]

I was at work in Los Angeles, with a radio on my desk covering live CNN coverage from their team in Baghdad of the first attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq with cruise missiles. I worked for a computer company that had a worldwide intranet, and live bulletin boards, pre WWW. Linux text readers, no pictures.

I was having a conversation with somebody in Australia. Live. We were both listening to live coverage from reporter Bernard Shaw talking about missiles flying over his head in Baghdad. I was in LA, the guy I was talking with was in Australia, and Shaw was in Iraq. Worldwide communication had become instantaneous. Geography meant nothing.

What was your first experience realizing the power of the Internet?

[lunasun]

1. Packet switching , IMP, ARPAnet, Mosaic

[kwassa]

3. Mosaic was the first browser I used.

A little later.

Usenet, I was all over that.

A little bit of IRC.

and I met my wife on Usenet.

[Anon-C]

2. K&R! nt

[dchill]

4. Napster! And AOL chat!

[htuttle]

5. Publishing a webzine in 1993 called 'slack' (way before the similarly-named chat software)

A colleague of mine and myself at a community newspaper in Madison, WI worked at publishing a bi-monthly newsprint-based news and opinion magazine. We sweated at trying to scrape up advertising money at the same time as we were sweating at coming up with sources and material.

In about 1993, we gave up newsprint and set up a website. it was kind of god send, in that we didn't have to care about how many words we used or whether we could afford color graphics.

We never did figure out how to sell ads or make any money, so we finally gave it up and went our separate ways. But it was a preview of what a sea change was coming.

Two guys and a Mac Plus had a world-wide audience for about $30/month and their time. Everyone was going to have that soon.

ps. You can find the last vestige of our content by googling 'Secret Dress Codes of the NSA'. Please excuse the prose -- it was the early '90s.

[Archae]

6. Don't forget the BBS message boards...

Like Rime (I think that's what it was called,) and the Fidonet.

That's how I got started 20 years ago.

2400 baud telephone line modem!

[Codeine]

8. I met my first girlfriend on a BBS in 89.

When we and the other core users of the BBS met up with the guy who ran it we found out it was being run out of a tiny little trailer, like a camping-type trailer. Dude was an old hippie who worked half of each year as a tech for the phone company to make enough money to not do a damned thing except play on his computers for the other half of the year.

[MattP]

7. The first chatroom i was in was pre internet with a 2400 baud modem

It was like a wargames modem and it about cheat codes for zork or other infocom games in the mid 80's on a apple II plus