Where has the Internet Gone?

My friend Pat and I talk a few times a week, and probably text each other almost every day. Pat still lives in the general area of where we grew up, and I now live in Florida. Often our conversations turn to what is going on in the hometown, where Pat makes references to places and events that I no longer remember. That topic, is for another post.

Since we are both approaching 40, I guess it is natural that our conversations often turn to “remember how [insert any topic here] used to be?” Something Pat doesn’t talk much about, but I often bring it up, is how he used to be really big into buying internet addresses, and creating web sites. When I say creating web sites, it wasn’t for a client, he simply put together a website about a topic he was interested in. Some sites were just about him with some pictures and paragraphs about what he is interested in. Remember, this was before MySpace or Facebook.

Pat has since mostly moved on from that time of his life. Partially because he now has a family and no longer has spare time to burn, but mostly because nobody really visits web sites for fun anymore. This is in no means backed up by any research, just my own observations.

Since this blog is supposed to be about my memories and the changing of the times, let’s time travel back to the late 80’s to early 90’s and check in with a younger me back in Upstate New York.

I was in no means an anti-social kid. I was mostly outside of the house all of the time, either riding bikes, or hanging out with any of of my friends who lived in the neighborhood. No cell phone, no beeper. You just walked or rode to a friend’s house to see if he was home. If he wasn’t home, you had to come back and check later. It wouldn’t do any good to call him, the phones back then only rang into the house, and you already know he isn’t there. So when you met up with friends, you socialized.

Sometimes if it was raining, too hot outside, or just nighttime and we were bored, we could get onto the computer. I think my friend Josh was the first person I knew that had one. He had a really cool Tandy computer with the coolest program we had at the time:

Prodigy.

There it was. The information superhighway. As far as we knew it anyway. This was awesome. Games to play and you could even interact with other people. Granted it took a few days to find out if your post was even noticed, but that didn’t matter, we only got onto the service every few days at most.

One day, I went over to Josh’s house, and he had something even better:

America Online.

There it was. The REAL information superhighway. Even better then Prodigy. We could talk to other people in real time now. And if memory serves correctly, all for the low low price of $5 an hour. His dad was paying the bill, so that didn’t last long. This is where I learned the lingo: “cya l8r” as in “see you later.” I don’t think this shorthand is even used anymore. Now you have to speak emoji. Emoji… what. the. hell.

Back to the story. You see the pattern here… soon after AOL, I was introduced by Josh to Bulletin Board Systems.

These were usually run by hobbyists at their home, and you would dial into their system. It was basically mini Prodigy. You could download files, e-mail, and play games. Some of them who could have more than one phone line installed had instant chat just like America Online.

The best part was that these were local, generally run by kids our age, and free. Also because of long distance charges (for you youngin’s: if you called anyone that didn’t live basically in your city, it cost extra on the phone bill) you probably went to school with the people on the board.

There it was. The information super- Actually, no. I don’t think we ever mistook this for the information superhighway. Although through some genius ideas (passing messages from hubs to boards) it did actually connect people across the globe. If you wanted to that is. I kept everything local as far as I can remember.

So off to college I go, where the school had an email system based on “telnet,” not web based. But everyone in the school used it so people were starting to figure it out. At the same time, it finally arrived:

The INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY – THE WORLD WIDE WEB:

AOL Website December 1996 — Screenshot from AOL’s Website on December 20, 1996. Recovered using archive.org.

Yes, that’s it. Not that exciting I know – but at the time, this was amazing. Most websites were not even as complex as this one. But we were finally there. Information was available on many topics. The number of websites and their complexity increased on a daily basis. It took off quickly, and within a few years we were banking and ordering products online more often than not. [As an aside, notice the Christmas theme AOL added to the website above? I’m a big fan of things like changing the theme or decor of a page depending on the time of year. I don’t see it that much anymore. I did it to my blog last Christmas and hopefully I will continue to do so.]

So this takes us into the 2000’s. Web pages are in full bloom, and back to my introduction of this story, Pat buys some .coms, .nets, dot whatevers, and just for fun, puts up some websites. Pat used software to help him build them. He didn’t know any coding, but his websites turned out pretty cool. They were interesting, some had a small following, and they generated conversation. I’m actually trying to get him to bring one of the sites back to life, even though it would most likely have to survive as an app instead.

This was in the time where you could “surf the web” and actually discover new things. I’m not talking educating yourself, but just going to websites to click around and see what it does. Personally, I think this was the “peak” of the internet we all imagined in the 90’s. It was an open forum where the internet seemed to have a personal touch.

There were services that let anybody make a website. Geocities was one that I remember off the top of my head. Even MySpace was basically a personal website space. Geocities is now gone (although due to some great work by internet archivists at Archive Team it has been preserved online). MySpace is still around, but no longer the same type of site it was.

So this brings us back to the question, “Where has the internet gone?” Yes, I am well aware there is still a lot of networked computers running our daily lives. When I ask the question I am asking where has the personality of the internet gone? The internet that I personally miss.

I think there are two answers to my question.

Smart phones
Facebook

Does anyone remember .mobi? This was a big deal when it was first announced. The .mobi TLD would be designated for mobile web sites. Read that again: mobile web sites. This was before the smart phone was released. You could use your Treo or your Palm Centro with the stylus and surf the web. Compared to now, it was archaic, but back then, you were still browsing the web.

Then the smartphone comes out and “apps” become popular. At first they were cute, fun programs. I specifically remember the “pouring beer” app and the “cigarette lighter” app for iPod/iPhone. But eventually, apps became more productive. They were basically portals into the website, without having to navigate to the site. Banking apps, radio apps, news apps. You no longer had to open the browser and type in a website address. Corporations began making millions on .99 cent apps, and it became mostly about entertainment, not expressing yourself or coming up with something new in a web browser.

Then the death blow. Facebook arrived.

And it grew.

And grew some more.

Until it has now become almost synonymous with “the internet.”

Think about it. A majority of the general public’s information comes from Facebook. We don’t email our friends anymore. We Facebook message them. Remember those funny emails you would get sent every day? Now they just post to your wall. If you look at the trending section of Facebook, you know what the current events are. Facebook now even asks you if you are okay when a disaster occurs. You know how I found out about the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando? Facebook started alerting my phone telling me my friends who live in Orlando were okay or haven’t responded yet.

Businesses now use it for customer service. They are creating bots to answer questions you may have about the company via their Facebook page. So now instead of searching for a company’s hours on the internet, you can simply Facebook message the company “What time do you close” and the bot will answer.

Let’s face it. Facebook wants to be the internet. It’s a business. I get it. I don’t fault them for that goal. I really don’t.

If one of those earlier online services I mentioned grew to the size of Facebook, I would be saying the same thing. AOL and Prodigy offered news, messaging and information, so what is the difference? There isn’t, other than Facebook grew to the size it is now.

So even though I said Facebook and smartphones are the reason for the internet changing, in my opinion, for the worse, they aren’t the cause.

We are the cause.

We did it. We became a society that has to let people know about every, single, minute, of our lives. The ease of posting photos and opinions has turned us into a one trick pony. We can share, share, share. But I think we have stopped listening and more importantly, creating. Things were just more interesting back when the internet was more than a handful of social media sites.

We’ve settled in. We post memes without fact checking them. Most people just scroll by, sharing them again when they chuckle. Nobody is creating an original experience anymore.

Ironic that this is coming from a guy with a free WordPress account and an off the shelf theme huh? I don’t think so. I think the originality is in the words you are reading right now. I miss the originality. I miss the clunky websites. I miss seeing something different on my screen. I miss seeing an original online experience.

Or… maybe it’s just me.

The Yearbook

I am from upstate New York, but I currently live in central Florida. During the summer months, you can set your watch by the daily severe thunderstorm. Yesterday, we had a power outage while I was at work, but it was back on by the time I arrived home. A few hours after dinner, it went out again, even though the weather had cleared. No big deal, it wasn’t oppressively hot inside. Yet. The power came back on quickly and everyone went about their business.

I have come to realize that my power company, or at least the section of the power grid I live on, is very fickle. It seems that with the slightest bit of poor weather, I am inevitably setting the clock on my microwave a few hours later. Today though, the power went out again, even though it was a beautiful day. My wife decided to head to the grocery store, and the other kids were out and about. As I sat in the living room, burning through my cell phone data allotment, I looked up and something caught my eye. My yearbooks.

I used to keep the yearbooks along with old photos and albums inside an ottoman we have. A while back I took them out and put them on the bookshelf next to my TV. There they sat. Until today.

I pulled out the first two yearbooks I ever had. The 1989 5th grade book, and the 1990 sixth grade. There is plenty of material in all the books to write several posts, so I will only review two of them tonight. The first thing I did was open the front cover and begin to look at the signatures and notes I received as we would trade yearbooks in the cafeteria and between class. The first note reads:

have an awful life bye — “have an awful life Bye Jeffrey”

So, Jeffrey (last name redacted) immediately wanted me to have an awful life. What you probably can’t tell by this without some context is that Jeffrey was just being funny. But this shows you what a-holes 10 year old boys can be. By the way, Jeffrey turned out to be an a-hole. So, draw your own conclusion.

I continue scanning through the inside cover and I come across this:

yo buthole hope you have a boring summer — “Yo buthole hope you have a boring summer Leo”

Wow. In the first 30 seconds of reading my yearbook I have people wishing me an awful life and a boring summer. This note was from Leo, and I have no problems with it. I’ll tell you why. First of all, Leo was, and still is, a hell of a nice guy. I really like the spelling error in “buthole.” The spelling error is surprising, since there is one thing 10 year old kids, at least a my school, were good at:swearing. True, butthole is not a true curse word, but it is close enough in its written form. Also, Leo only wished me a boring summer, not an awful life. Let’s keep thumbing through the pages.

I quickly skim through the actual pages of the book, where teachers have written notes next to their picture. One note that cracks me up, and I don’t have a picture of it for you, is my 5th grade teacher telling me I have a great sense of humor but “don’t let it get you into trouble.” We’re all adults now, so I will translate that for you: “Hey, you’re a smartass, and I can see it getting worse as you get older.” Well she was right. However, I now have a knack for sarcasm that has been documented since 1989 and has been perfected over 2 decades.

My yearbook wasn’t completely full of written wishes of doom and gloom. There were a few funny ones in there. There were also some well wishes. Here is one:

Our team stinks without you. — “I want you to know are team stinks without you. Have a great summer. Mike”

Yes he meant “our” instead of “are” but lets analyze this. I remember who Mike is. We are no longer friends, but we were in middle in high school. What makes this note stick out to me is I have no idea what team he is talking about. It could have been something in gym class, because I don’t remember him playing little league. I racked my brain on this one and really tried to think of what he was talking about, but I’m clueless. I assume it was some gym thing, but if it was, why wouldn’t we be on the same team anymore? Lost memory I guess. Moving on.

“Dave, Have an awesomely bogus summer. Hope you have a nice teacher next year. Loren.”

I saved this note for last. This note was written by Loren. I vaguely remember him, so I can’t tell you anything about him. I can tell you that it seems he was genuinely nice at the time, wishing me well and hoping I have a “nice teacher next year.”

But read the post closely, and you will see some social clues. I picked up on this almost immediately, and it only made me realize again, that I live in a different era then when I grew up. He uses the words “awesomely bogus.” The two words seem to contradict one another, because we look back at bogus as meaning “bummer” or “that sucks.” What I think he meant to say was have an “awesomely radical” summer. At the time though, and I didn’t remember this until I really thought about this note, we used the words “rad” and “bogus” interchangeably. I would attribute that to the fact that we were 10 years old, and using slang that was being used by the older teenage kids. Maybe I’m over analyzing, but that’s my theory.

This one note is a time capsule. It shows the slang of the day. I haven’t pointed it out yet, but look at the “equation” on the left hand side:

2 cool 2 be 4 gotten — “2 cool + 2 be = 4 gotten”

I don’t know if this took off at other schools, but this showed up in yearbooks for a few years at my school. Loren was telling me I would never be forgotten. Because I was too cool to be. Nice.

I’m sure if I showed this to my 11 year old daughter, she would roll her eyes at it, but hey, it was the language of my time. Maybe I will show her and let you know what her reaction is.

As I went to put the yearbook down, a picture caught my eye. It was on the very last page. It is a picture of someone with a monster mask on, probably on Halloween. What caught my eye though, and gave me a chuckle, was what they did to the picture. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, when you still had to get film developed, someone came up with the idea of stickers in the shape of comic strip bubbles that you could put on the picture. These were very popular at the time, but there was no customization. The stickers came already printed with quips on them. What did the sticker on this photo read? But of course…

I Love Christmas

I know it’s been a while. It was not my intention to keep my readers hanging for the next post. Too many other things came up, including a job transfer, school events for the kids, and other little things that have kept me exhausted and away from the keyboard.

Those things have also kept me from something else. Decorating the house so it can be seen from outer space. I’m nowhere near the people who burn out the power grid lighting up their house – I would like to be – but my salary won’t allow it. I had my Christmas tree up pretty much on time, just after Thanksgiving. The outside of the house got decorated a week late because of a wedding I attended. Now I find myself trying to place the 4 or 5 crates of indoor Christmas decorations all over the house. I don’t think it’s all getting put up this year. Unfortunately.

It’s too bad that Christmas just doesn’t hold the same amount of excitement as it did when I was 10 years old. We all go through that though. Now we get the thrill out of making it memorable for our children. Something that sticks out in my mind from when I was younger, was that you had one chance to catch the Christmas Specials on television, or else you had to wait an entire year to see them again. If I didn’t catch Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer on CBS, I was screwed. Frosty, same thing. If I ever missed A Charlie Brown Christmas, I don’t know if I could concentrate for the next 364 days.

One thing I remember though. I never missed a Christmas special. At least, I don’t remember ever missing one. I was always told by one of my parents when it would be on, and I would be ready, already in my pajamas, when the show started. We didn’t have programming guides on the TV back then. We used a book which had a chart in it and looked like this:

Now this is a more modern version of the insert that came with every Sunday newspaper. I’ll try to find one from the 80’s but right now this will have to do.

I don’t know what it is about Christmas that stirs up memories. Maybe it’s the musty smell of the Christmas tree box. It could be the special ornaments that you only see for about a month a year. The joy in finding a new decoration in a store that reminds of you of a decoration you had in your house as a kid.

The one thing I can’t seem to recreate? The feeling of anticipation on Christmas Eve. The desire for that new toy. The eagerness to open the next present even though it’s your brother’s turn to open one.

I can’t get that feeling back. I can however, watch my children experience that feeling. And that’s okay with me.

I’m Totally Frustrated. I Want my Bean Bag Chair.

I am completely frustrated today. We had a semi-busy day in the office today. A lot of unscheduled projects and issues came up. Nothing too crazy, just a lot of nonsense. I wasn’t project lead on any of the assignments today, but I got pulled in a few different directions to help out. I don’t mind helping, trust me. I guess I just get a little stressed with the way some others decide to run their projects. I understand it’s not my place to insert my ideas in another person’s work, so I just go with the flow.

I then had to make some personal phone calls due to another issue I am having. It’s nothing bad, and not worth describing here. Just another item on the to-do list.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t have too many friends that I can just go “hang out” with. Most everyone I know is married with children. On the way out of the building today I ran into one of my really good friends from work. I haven’t seen him in a long time because he moved to a different division, but I run into him in the hallways every once in a while. We caught up for a few minutes before we both had to go our separate ways.

I then figured I may call another friend of mine and see if he wanted to hang out. Apparently tonight is “movie night” at his house, so we can’t hang out. Apparently I’m having trouble finding something to do.

So all those things, plus the fact I’m overly tired, has caused me to feel frustrated. Just run down. Yes, I know. This blog is not my personal diary. I am not posting about my day-to-day activities and my moods. Here how this all fits in:

I no longer have a personal escape to go to. I no longer have “my room.”

My house isn’t big enough for a man cave, and I am married so the room isn’t mine along by any stretch of the imagination. It got me thinking about how we used to have a place to go to. Someplace you could go and shut the door and do (pretty much) whatever you wanted to decompress or get away from it all.

I shared my room with my brother, which was kind of a pain, but I do remember we had the bean bag chairs, and the brand new SEGA Genesis hooked up to our TV. I could spend the entire day up there and for the most part be left alone. If I didn’t want to bother with anybody I could go in and just close the door. Our room was also kind of cool because at one point we actually got a cable box to hook to our TV. It had a wired remote, push button switches, and a toggle switch because each push button had three possible channels. You selected the row of channels by selecting the row on the toggle switch. It looked similar to this one:

Anyone remember that? Also, you had the option of watching the scrambled channels and hoping the purple scramble would briefly organize itself into something recognizable. Yes, that was entertainment. You can’t imagine the freedom this little box gave a 12-year-old kid in the pre-internet days. Especially watching shows like USA Up All Night. For those who don’t know what that was, it was a late night B-movie that played on the USA Network, with host Rhonda Shear having segments in between commercial breaks.

You have to remember. There was nothing else to do in those days for entertainment at home. No texting, computers were rare, no video on demand. You could watch television or play video games. Or, go outside and play. Those were good times.

I really wish I had my own room with the bean bag chair and my cable box right now. Sounds like a great way to relax.

Good Friends, Good Advice

This is just a quick post. Actually it’s kind of a teaser.

A few days ago, I shared my first blog post with a friend of mine. We used to work in the same office. He’s pretty knowledgeable about most things, and he has a talent for writing. He gave me some great suggestions to help me along with this young blog. I took one of his suggestions and started doing some research. Part of that research included looking up some of the aerial photos of places that were important to me in my youth. One such place was a park where I spent several nights a week every summer. The park for the most part no longer exists now as it did back then. It has been “remodeled” for a lack of a better word, and may of the structures are gone, but the park is still open.

So as I examined the satellite photos of the park, I noticed something. I like to think it is something that the average person wouldn’t have noticed unless it meant something to them. Something that put a smile on my face. I’ll write about it in detail later, but I think I will let you see it here. Tell me if you see what I see.

Do you see it? I do. Stay tuned.

That’s What The “M” Stands For

To be honest, other than my aches and pains I get a lot more often now than before, I don’t really feel like I’m in my late 30’s. Mostly since my maturity level is about the same as when I was 22 years old. When I hang around with my friends, or start joking around, my maturity level drops to near 15 years old. One thing keeps reminding me that I am at the age that I used to consider “old” when I was in high school: My 11-year-old daughter.

She isn’t doing it intentionally, but it’s really hard not to notice when she asks “Dad, you were alive in the 20th century, how did they [fill in the blank]?” Seriously, she recognizes that I was alive in the 1900’s, which to me, sounds like I was born before electricity.

A few nights ago, my wife was watching a documentary on one of the On Demand channels we have. The show was about the awesome music group, Genesis. If you don’t know who they are, you will probably learn a lot about the “20th century” from my blog, but also, here is a video to help you catch up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIBMpHl-1WU

Where am I going with this? During the documentary, the narrator talks about the launch of MTV. My daughter happened to be watching and she says “Wow, they had MTV back then?” I just had to take a moment to myself and process the question. Sure, she’s only 11. She thinks everything was invented yesterday. But then I realized… she has NO IDEA what MTV was. Today its a channel full of pregnant teenager shows and – okay – I don’t know what is on MTV anymore, I can’t stand watching it. I do, however, know for a fact that it sure isn’t the 24/7 Music Video Channel.

I remember watching MTV all the time. I remember watching all day waiting for “Walk Like an Egyptian” to play. Remember that? Oh, good times.

MTV had hosts called VJ’s. Video Jockeys. How awesome was that? They also had countdown shows, MTV News, and MTV Spring Break, which all revolved around MUSIC. As a young MTV viewer you got to know your VJ’s : Kurt Loder, Martha Quinn, Tabitha Soren, Downtown Julie Brown, and many others.

A lot of the stars we know today were on MTV back in their early years. Jon Stewart, Colin Quinn, Pauly Shore, and Carlson Daly to name a few. Of course there were my personal favorites: Jenny McCarthy and Daisy Fuentes, for obvious reasons.

All that is gone now. I now have access to everything they have ever had on that channel, but it’s not the same. I hate to say things come to easy to us now, but sometimes I think they do. There’s no wait. No anticipation. No impatience. No thrill.

Now I find myself looking at my daughter, realizing she will never understand what it was like not being able to watch a music video with a simple search on YouTube. She believes that MTV has nothing to do with music. She’s right. It doesn’t have anything to do with music anymore. She doesn’t even understand why it’s called M TV! She probably just thinks it’s 3 random letters they decided to put on the channel.

So, feeling as old as my chronological age, I sigh and tell her. “Yes they did. It played music videos. That’s what the “M” stands for in MTV. Music Television.”

“Oh.” She replies, turning back to the TV to watch the show. No big deal to her. Just another interesting fact in her young world.

At least she likes Genesis. That’s daddy’s girl.