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I have always been interested in all things related to science and technology. A Texas Instruments TI99 -4a "computer" was my first experience with computers. It was really more of a video game than a computer, but it had a keyboard, and one of the "game cartridges" was a Basic language compiler. I spent countless hours devising a program that simulated a conversation between the user and the computer. My goal was to make it seem as though the computer could carry on a conversation and be indistinguishable from a real person. That was about the extent of the machine’s capability. There was no modem and indeed no semblance of a public internet at the time. This was in the early 1980’s.

At some point in the late 1980’s, around 1988, I purchased an AT based computer and with it a 300 baud modem. This was low end stuff at the time, I think 1200 baud modems were available by then, but I didn’t have a lot of money and settled for what I could afford. With the 300 baud modem, I could connect to local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). The BBS hosted various public message boards, most of which were themed or topic oriented. Postings were made on the nearest local BBS and then each BBS passed the messages around until it spread back to a BBS where the intended recipient of the message could read it and reply. It could take several days to send a message and get a reply, depending upon the routing. A local BBS near me also hosted a multi-player online game. It was largely text-based, but had some ASCII star-maps to help visualize the galaxy in which each player’s merchant fleets roamed.

Not long after that I found CompuServe. CompuServe had a network of servers that allowed users to dial in access the information, games, and communications (e-mail even) that the company provided. They charged by the minute. With a 300 baud modem, those minutes accumulated pretty quickly. I eventually upgraded to a computer with an 80286 processor and a 2400 baud modem.

My 80286 became a 386 and then a 486 and became more capable of handling graphics. Somewhere in the early 1990’s I got a Pentium machine. At this point, the Internet and the World Wide Web had officially come into existence, but since I was on America Online, much of my online activity took place within the limited scope of the AOL servers. Eventually, around 1997, AOL allowed access to the entire outside web as well and became a true Internet Service Provider (ISP).

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s it was not at all unusual at my house to see the wall phone removed and placed on the floor with a cable running from the exposed phone jack to the computer when someone in the house was online. There were no wireless Local Area Networks (LAN). Dial up modems had improved, but they remained slow, and we marveled at the promised speeds of cable modems and waited for our cable provider to offer internet service.

Today, of course, the cable modem is nearly ubiquitous. We can access the internet with speeds capable of streaming music or even full television quality video in real-time. We can send instant messages not only to other computers, but to cell phones as well and get replies back within seconds. With webcams we have achieved the science fiction staple of video telephony. Instead of being limited to just one service provider like AOL, we can choose from dozens with the aid of websites like broadband.co.uk who all compete for our business with free offers and promotional pricing. We’ve come a long way.