Young Writers Society

@Nate and other old people! Remember this?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/49676/wh ... ooked-1995

I FEEL SO OLD.

Ah, you were only 7 in 1995. Don't feel old.

True, but the internet was a rarity! It only came to my house in 1998. I remember begging to watch this, which was the best animation that we found:

http://www.ezone.com/games/spelunking/gamecode.htm

Also, one of the reasons why it was a rarity was because if you were on the internet, you couldn't use the phone line! And, phones are way better than being able to use the internet, right? After all, how could you contact someone if the phone line wasn't working?!

Heh, I remember when you could pull up every non-profit's website in the world in just a single webpage!

My family started using Prodigy back in 1993. It didn't have much, or at least I didn't use it for much, but it did have two great games on it. I also joined my first forum on Prodigy, which was a "Barney must die" club (my youngest brother was 4 at the time and watched Barney endlessly). Then my family got America Online in 1995, which was a huge step up. Got my own email (lukesky12@aol.com... I wonder if it still works, but even if it does, I have no idea what the password would be), and started a club dedicated to saving the Amazon Rainforest.

Didn't start using the World Wide Web until 1997, but it wasn't much compared to America Online at that time. Web pages were bland (the default color was grey back then), and there just wasn't much content. Most companies still didn't have a website, but they did usually have an AOL site. There was also a total lack of games on the World Wide Web.

But then I discovered Geocities, and that was really neat. I really wish I had saved my Geocities website, but I remember it pretty well. The background was some sort of blue wavy graphic, and I had midi music playing in the background (I think it was Charlie Brown). Had a few pages on it as well: one for bio, one for my favorite bands (Red Hot Chili Peppers and Goo Goo Dolls back then), and another one for links. I also used a ton of gifs everywhere. No webpage was cool back then unless you used lots of animated gifs.

But, the Internet was awful in the 90s. It took webpages half a minute to load, and you paid for it all per minute. There was also nothing to do on it. I remember watching some news program where they were talking about how it was going to change everything and I was thinking, "But it's so boring."

And of course nowadays, I'm able to watch full-length HD movies on a device that fits in my pocket and weighs less than my wallet while stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Not only that, but I get annoyed if it takes more than a few seconds to load. The future is weird.

Oh god, I remember dial-up. And the noises it made. And how dad was the only one allowed to use it. And how mad mom would get when she missed a phone call because of the internet.

I legitimately remember telling my friend the reason she hadn't been able to call me back was we were using the internet. No joke.

We had dial up for awhile, but I don't actually remember much of the Internet before Google. That's probably because some of my earliest memories of poking around online begin when I was... 11ish? So it was already the naughties.

I remember MSN being a huge deal when I got it, because it meant keeping in touch with a friend who moved.

Also, @Nate , one could argue that blue is the new black when it comes to the internet.

We had dial-up until a few years ago... -_-
It was the worst.

I was two years old back then.

Wow, I feel young.

Anyway, my family had the internet as long as I can remember. My parents were pretty technologically advanced, my mother had her first mobile phone in the 80s and I think they had a computer before my brother and I were born as well (so also late 80s). I don't remember us ever getting fitted for the internet- and I remember it well in the house I lived in from 1996 to 1999- the dial up tone was the best! And I remember Mum telling me I had to stop using the computer so that she could call someone.

We got broadband pretty soon after we moved to Dublin.

It's crazy how much things have changed since then- although also homosexuality was a crime and divorce was illegal in Ireland in 1995. The Internet isn't the only thing that's changed.

I wasn't even born in '95.

*feels very small*

I almost want to say I missed it (being born after 1995), but we're still in the first wave, I think, of at least the internet. I mean, I still used an old CRT 800 x 600 monitor up until like 2009! Granted, I never had to deal with the wait times (I only started using the internet/computer shortly after we got broadband), and technical interfaces (Look at Google: Text Box, Button, Tabs).

Computers never cease to amaze me, though. When you think that Google handles more information than your brain can ever handle ... every day... I mean even the speed of computers is mind blowing. We've gone from computers that can't do more than one thing at a time the size of a desk, to computers that fit in our pocket that can render multiple high detail images, blend them, display them every 1/60th of a second, all while streaming music and watching HD tv!

That's insane!

I mean, I can randomly generate 100,000 names in 1 minute with bad code and software that's considered slow (Python). Can you make up 100,000 coherent fictional names in a minute? :p