Your earliest memories of email/internet

[Thepigeonsarecoming]

I was at university, the internet was nothing but text and boring. But we could send an email. Although since I had to use a log in on a uni computer I’d call home to see if if was received. Anyone else?

First time I ever went on the Internet was at work when I was 17 in 1997.

My boss was so excited. I was totally underwhelmed

I just thought what a load of shit. It took ages for a page to load.

The 28.8kbps modem (then later 36.6) dialing in -beep beep boop beep-
and IRC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat#/media/File:Xaric_screen_shot.jpg
Yahoo email
I was blown away by LAN ethernet speeds at uni

Weebls stuff was the best. I've Seen Things was my favourite video, and the cheese family I think I can probably still remember all the words to their songs.

I remember being in primary school and in assembly, the teacher said that he could tell us what was going to be on the front cover of the evening edition of the local newspaper (a carrot shaped like a man of you are interested. I lived in a really exciting place).

He said he knew this because the school had just had this thing called 'the internet' installed. We were all like 'oooooooooooo'.

Links browser!
No Javascript, no Flash, no pictures even at first.
Pretty good actually - the focus was on content, not marketing. I remember well the difference it made having so much access to so much knowledge. Now it's porn and analytics and private companies fighting for control over everything. I'm old and disillusioned.
Talking of which, has anyone else noticed that google seems to be trying to make you access webpages through them as a portal on mobile devices now?

I remember nagging my dad for ages to get the internet at home. Although back in those days I only had 3 friends with email addresses and 2 of them (including me) had one email address for the whole family. Dial up which took forever to get going and being told off if I was online for more than 20 min at a time.

Someone mentioned the millennium Doomsday project upthread too. Used as a dire warning for years of why we needed good standards and not too many technological updates for years, because we can still see the 1086 Domesday book now but the millennium one was inaccessible just a few years later thanks to obsolescence. Very useful lesson. Then some clever so-and-so finally managed to make it available again recently. Bah.

I had a Wanadoo email address. remember inviting friends over and we got pissed and looked up friends on friends reunited.

I started work in 1993 and email was introduced while I was there. We actually wrote letters before that.

I can't remember what we had at university but we had to have dissertations typed up on word processors! There was no internet to do research.

I don’t actually know how I would have got through a levels and university without the internet. How did you research anything ?

It was around 1996. I was 12 or 13. I booked a computer slot in the local library as I very much wanted to sign a petition I had read about to bring back the tv series My so called life. I didn’t get to sign it as I had no clue what to do, I just typed stuff into the search bar.

Whilst email and the internet was only available to the public from 1995 I used both way back in the 70's and 80's at work. Nothing like it is now of course but it still felt like 'magic'.

I bought a computer and dial up modem in 1995 for home - I was in my 30s by then and loved it. There was something quite fantastic about aol messenger, I remember being on it at 2am one night and talking to a random man who was having his breakfast in Texas.

Now I have multiple conversations across the world all going on at the same time - and I still think it's amazing.

I don’t actually know how I would have got through a levels and university without the internet. How did you research anything ?

We had these weird things called libraries that had lots of reference books in them

Actually that just reminded me of something a little boy that I look after said.

On the way home from school one afternoon and he asked 'do I have to go to school tomorrow', I said unfortunately he did. His reply was that they had already taught him to read and write, everything else was on google so he didn't need to learn it lol

A / S / L?

One of my earliest memories is Comic Chat in 1996/7. The ‘chatroom’ was a cartoon strip that was drawn as you chatted.
My mum was part of an online shopping trial in the 1980s in the Midlands. I think it was linked to Prestel? I thought that was magic at the time!

We first had the internet in 1997. But my first recollection of being able to do anything remotely useful with it was in 1999 when I found ticketmaster
I bought tickets for Lion King at the Lyceum and Spice Girls at the MEN.

Showing my age here but I actually went on a school trip to see a computer
It was in the 70's at Manchester University and it was the size of my house.

Phil I was on JANET too :) This thread is making me feel old.

The first online grocery shopping was totally different from today, there were no graphics, reviews, etc.
It was just text lists of foods in alphabetical order.
I was with Sainsburys, and if something you ordered was out of stock, you were sent the next thing on the alphabetical list instead. So you might order bananas but would be sent baps!
Also AOL were forever timing out sessions, so you had to do it all at breakneck speed.
It was all so exciting!

First introduction at uni (1999) when we learned....how to use a search engine

And there was no Google back then, it was Alta Vista!

Late 90s. My primary school got it installed and I was going on holiday for two weeks, so the head teacher invited me to be the first one on, and let me check the weather of where I was going.

I was at university and if we wanted a college email address, we had to go and discuss with the IT people why we needed one. I got my first email address in my final year of uni (97) when I was completing my dissertation research.

Thank you all, you’ve made me smile knowing I’m not alone in remembering this :)