Everyday I browse the web and find many interesting things. It’s amazing how much the internet has changed in the years since it was introduced. I remember when the first time I used the internet, it was at my neighbors house. He had a cable connection from Media One then the cable company in this part of Florida. I was amazed, and now I look back and remember sitting at my computer for hours having fun, but I had no internet on my PC, it was a 486SX, MS-DOS 6.22, with Windows 3.1. It’s amazing, we got dial-up in 1998, and we got DSL in 2003, I was 17.

At around 9 I grabbed a receipt which had my grandpa’s credit card number on it and signed myself up for AOL. That was on my Windows 3.1 machine. Then got in trouble for it but I didn’t care all I wanted to do was use the internet. It was 1998 when we finally did get dial up with MSN. That was cool, I didn’t care about the speed then, but now I could never go back to dial up.

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Comment by cliffystones on June 7, 2009 at 8:00am: 1994 or 1995 (I don't remember). 14.4k dial up modem. AT&T Worldnet, 5 hours free per month for a year incentive (pretty cool then!). Had to patch Windows 3.11 to get the connection to work. Text only, a still picture took at least a couple of minutes to load.

Comment by David on June 5, 2009 at 12:00pm: Yeh, the internet has changed since the days when I was on Delphi and using ARCHIE and VERONICA to search for information in (almost exclusively) available academic sites. No web, then. But then there was web! (April 30, 1993) And Mosaic and then Cello browser (an early Mosaic browser variant)! Heck, I had just ditched my 300 baud modem and was really FLYING at 14.4kbps! *heh*

Yeh, it's changed. Nominal 8mbs connection, no metering, no additional phone charges, many, many millions more accessible sites (some of which actually contain useful information *heh*). A little different.

Comment by Keith Stoneberger on June 5, 2009 at 10:02am: My first internet connection was in 1999 on webtv. I was on that for about a year and i loved it, I didn't think that there was anything like it. A year later I finally had a computer built for me and I logged on, 56kbps..... My brother who lives out in the country was getting 26kbps. ...... Now 10 years later I am getting around 12 mbps....... My mother, because of the area she lives in, can only get satellite service. She is getting only 1.5 mbps download and it feels like the old 26 kbps to me. The web site designs from the '90s was like big and all over the place. Now they are more user friendly. Occasionally I will visit the internet wayback machine to look at some of websites that first started out. And now, I can sit at home and learn whatever I want.

Comment by Sheila Jones on June 5, 2009 at 5:26am: I started working at a non-profit foundation 15 years ago whose purpose, at the time, was providing information for start-up entrepreneurs (through BBS and fax!!). I got my first e-mail account then. We didn't have the WWW, per se, and didn't even have a web presence until late 1994, early 1995. But things have changed mightily since then. The fax delivery of our content went by the wayside and was delivered strictly over the internet. Our internet service speed has always been pretty good at work (we were even an ISP at one time) - home was a different story!! For years I wasn't even able to get internet at my house. Then, finally, dial up (1998)!! What a royal pain to go from work (with a T-1 line) to dial up at home. Now I'm able to get high-speed cable, and don't EVER want to go back! I've had my e-mail address for 15 years now - hard to believe!

Comment by Phil Miller on June 5, 2009 at 5:22am: I remember the internet way before being a geek was cool. I didn't know anyone who had a connection at home, I would spend hours in the computer lab of my college on the internet. At that time graphical browsers were just coming out and only one lab had Masaic and it was always locked for some reason. So I would sit and use a text only browser on a terminal. Every time I get blown away by the "next big thing" I think back to those days. So much has happened so fast, and I truly believe that it has been because the internet has been "open". Virtually anyone can make the internet cool, not just the big guys!

Comment by Nay on June 5, 2009 at 2:22am: I remember logging on for the first time (with my dads connection) when I was a kid (about 10 I think, so maybe just over a decade or so!) and I remember the pain of the 56k dail-up. Especially when your mates moved onto broadband, bought Counter-Strike, and you were left out every round whilst waiting to download the map their all playing on, when that finished, they were on the next!!!

But the internet has become such an integrated part of so many peoples lives. Sure, I could live without it... but what would I do?

Comment by Shtanto on June 4, 2009 at 9:22pm: It's worth remembering that the Internet is about 5,00 days old. In all that time it has never broken. Pretty amazing if you think about it.

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