Do you want to know where all this came from?

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:15 am

This is off topic but it seemed to fit here better.

A nice little history of how the Arpanet became the Internet. What is scary for me is that I have worked with a couple of the people mentioned. That's what happens when you are an early adopter (I started work/playing with this in 1986).

I hope you enjoy this and learn something at the same time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/in ... et-arpanet

Post by **DonnaT** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:30 am

My first ventures into it was in 1983, while working at the US Patent Office.

There was only one group authorized to use the computers at that time, as security was a concern.

I wasn't in that group, but managed to hack in to do some online searching for case law and such. Sure beat trying to look things up in the law books.

This is how I got so good at doing online searches

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:36 am

Donna

I don't know about you but I could not see where what I was doing at the start would lead to. I for one am very glad, otherwise how could I have met such a lovely bevy of ladies as here.

I think it was in 1991 or 1992 I realised I was not alone, IRC started soon after. This had really been a man made god send to people like us and the spread is going to truly make it a world wide web.

Michelle Miller · Post by **Michelle Miller** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:12 am

My first experience with it was at 16 years old, in the high school's library, being calling over by my other nerd buddies because there was supposed to be 'this naked picture of a girl' on some website...

...and the Radio Shack PC crashed 1/4 of the way into loading it...

London · Post by **London** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:39 am

My first exposure to chatting online with people hundreds of mile away was when I worked a brief stint at IBM in the early 70's. This was of course on a proprietary/private network linking enormous mainframes (the removable hard drive disks were the size of a car tire and you needed a dozen of them to hold one simple program or database). It was great fun to have sexy chats with female operators that I'd never met.

I started using the net for online support when I had my own software development Company in the 90's. Sure saved me a lot of travel expense.

Anyway, I am truly thankful for the Internet for all the information it has placed at my fingertips, and for meeting all you wonderful ladies.

Do you ever do searches that turn up nothing and wonder how it is possible that no one ever thought of that before?

London

Lydia · Post by **Lydia** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:10 pm

In early internet days, my first encounter with TG was seeing porn sites with "shemales". It was frightening to me to consider: "Am I like that?", "Is that my fate?"

More sobering encounters followed, and I discovered I am not alone. My prior years of guilt and shame would be washed away.

Now all is revealed just by "Googling".

Hugs,

Lydia

Leeza · Post by **Leeza** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:44 pm

My first internet experience was in 95 when I was at one of my son's place for Thankgiving. I did a search on insterment reapir (horns).By that time he had been trying to talk me into getting one for a couple of years.

In reading this post though I was reminded of the time in the 90's when my half brother and my uncle met for the first time. My uncle had gone to work for IBM as a repairman in the early 50's and had gone on into sales. My brother had gone into programing in the late 50's. It was interesting to listen to them talk about the computers they had worked with. Realy I wasn't totaly left out as I had seen my first computer in 59 and what a monster it was.

Leeza

Angela · Post by **Angela** » Wed Apr 28, 2010 3:55 am

My first experience was in 1990 but was strictly work related. I didn't get a home PC until 1993. I wish the internet had been available when I was growing up. Just knowing there were other girls like me all over the place would have been wonderful.