Today we are going to talk about the history of the Internet. Remember when the Internet was young. I can still recall the absolute thrill of going on AOL and being able to see who is online. At the time cell phones were not that popular and only a few people had them. Pagers were more of the craze at the time. I recall the thrill of being able to chat with your friends while you (slowly) surfed the Internet. You have to remember that most people had a dial up connection to the Internet. AOL was the distinct leader and probably the influence for the Internet the way it is today. They had the technology that many other companies were trying to duplicate. Of course back in the day, if you were connected to your AOL, which was most of the time, you could not receive phone calls. You had several choices. You could run a third party software on your computer and opt in for busy call forwarding on your phone line or install a second phone line. If you opted for the software option, your computer would flash up a pop up screen notifying you that you had a phone call. The number would show up and you could then decide whether to keep surfing or call the person back. With the latter option, you simply had a second phone line coming into the house. That is the option I preferred. Of course if you had 2 computers, you could now have two systems surfing at the same time. Back then if you had two computers connected to the Internet you were at the top of the technology world!
Once companies saw the success that AOL was enjoying, almost everybody was offering Internet dial up service at often times very low rates. In fact some companies like Net Zero and Blue Light Dot Com (K Mart) offered a limited free dial up service. You were allows so many minutes a month for free and if you went over you would have to pay an extra fee. Of course, most people would pay the extra amount to be able to stay online longer. It was a source of good revenue for quite some time.
As with everything, nothing stays the same. Technology started to improve and the hunger for a faster Internet was totally crazy. People wanted speed. They were tired of waiting hours for a larger download to get to their computer. The age of DSL was about to begin. AOL and Ma Bell were probably the top providers of this service. In fact AOL had a contract with Ma Bell to use the lines for their high speed DSL service. I used their service for many years and it served me well. It was much faster then dial up and it allowed the phone line to be free. I was able to get rid of my second phone line that I had for several years.
The next phase was when the cable companies starting offering Internet services. The larger pipe allowed faster speeds and the competition began. Every wanted to be known for having the fastest speed possible. At the time our cable company was Perry cable. Years later many of the cable companies across the country were taken over by Comcast. They are the main provider here in Florida. The race is still on with U-Verse and Cable going head to head for the business. Today, we can open a website in less time then it used to take to just think about what we wanted to search for. If a site takes longer then a couple of milliseconds to load we are anxious and impatient. We are in the world of high technology. Technology always comes with a price. A good portion of our monthly bills goes to paying for our toys. In general, technology has enriched our lives in some aspects and it allows us to do jobs that we did not even consider years ago. On the downside, it has made us less social and we spend less time actually talking to people directly. It is also responsible for the downfall of some great institutions like the Postal Service. What about the future? We will have to see if the rapid pace of technology totally changes life, as we know it. It certainly will continue to kill off important jobs as computers do more and more tasks that used to be done by good old-fashioned human sweat.
Author: Joe Zelenak, Owner Advantage Computers
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