Reply to this thread if you think you are a pioneer of the internet

[Mayne]

I'm throwing my hand up. 47 years and one of the first people to ever use a cable modem in ontario Canada yet across the world.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Nah, I wish.

I was on Compuserve young, and never had AOL (point of pride), but I feel like to claim this honor you need to have used Usenet back in the 80s when it was used for talking and not stealing.

 

[Atreus21]

I remember playing Barren Realms on various BBSs. Was a blast.

 

[MongGrel]

Nah, I wish.

I was on Compuserve young, and never had AOL (point of pride), but I feel like to claim this honor you need to have used Usenet back in the 80s when it was used for talking and not stealing.

+1

Was on Compuserve myself around 1990 or so and used to play Mech II on a Kali link online, and beta tested a lot of games, starting with Evercrack the last 3 phases.

But I never pioneered anything. Other than helping other people test their networks.

I think I had my first wooden box cable modem around 1993. Had been on dial up well before then.

Had a C64 for awhile before then, but did not go online with it.

 

[Oyeve]

I was working at Morgan Stanleys IT dept way back and I remember when we first successfully connected a Windows 3.1 system to the internet using chameleon or netmanage or some old crap like that. Was truly awesome. Then email was becoming a thing.

 

[Homerboy]

I'd say I was an "early adopter", but not a "pioneer". Pioneer would be somebody that helped develop and mold the internet into what it's become.

I've been online since... 1988 or so? I've had pretty much every speed of modem along the way (including ISDN) and was clearly one of the first in the area to get SDSL (yes, they use to offer synchronous DSL) and I was so early on the Time Warner wagon that my email was <firstname><last initial>

I've been on USENET, BBS, IRC you name it . I've been on beta and Q/A tams early gaming services like TEN and MPLAYER.

I've worked for BBN, NAP.net, GTE-I and other carriers along the way.

 

[zinfamous]

Having recently watched through Halt and Catch Fire, I can safely disqualify myself from this club.

 

[Homerboy]

Having recently watched through Halt and Catch Fire, I can safely disqualify myself from this club.

Exactly -- THOSE types of people are "pioneers"

 

[BoberFett]

Back in the late 90s I was the lead developer on a CD-based legal research system. We were one of the first companies in that space (if not the first) to add web-based results to our product. We had a web server hanging off our sweet fractional 56Kbps frame relay line and we'd run local and internet searches simultaneously and display the results and documents commingled seamlessly in the application.

I thought I was pretty badass at the time.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I was around when the internet got introduced here, I remember it was super revolutionary... and it was dialup. DSL then came out in year 2000 or so and that was HUGE, you could use your phone AND internet at the same time, and it was like over 10 times faster than dialup! (was 1 meg at the time).

What's interesting is I now work in the central office where this equipment is housed, the original Newbridge DSLAMs are still there, the cards are like an inch thick and hold only 8 customers and there's maybe like 10 cards per shelf. The newer DSLAMs have way more cards per shelf, and they hold like 48 customers each. But even that's old school now, because we have FTTH now, literally over 1000x faster than dialup depending on what package you're on.

 

[flexy]

You guys are all incredible advanced. "Modem", my ass.

My first "modem" was actually called "acoustic coupler", and I built it myself... ca. 1986 or so.

 

[lxskllr]

I was a latecomer. My stepson got a webtv in 98, and that was my first interaction with the net. Fuckin' amazing. It got even better when I got my daughter a computer for jul; I can save stuff!

Webtv was kind of a neat idea for the time. Easy to operate, and zero hassle. A lot of people today don't do anything that couldn't be done on webtv.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I started with BBS' in the early 90s and then moved to dial up internet in the mid 90s. Is that early enough?

 

[DrPizza]

I was a latecomer also. I didn't use the Internet until 1985.

 

[master_shake_]

we got the internet in 1995

dial-up of course on a 33.6 modem.

 

[sdifox]

Online since 300 baud days but internet proper would be 1990.

 

[SKORPI0]

"Pioneer", not at all. :hmm:


List of Internet pioneers

Instead of a single "inventor", the Internet was developed by many people over many years. The following are some Internet pioneers who contributed to its early development.
These include early theoretical foundations, specifying original protocols, and expansion beyond a research tool to wide deployment.

another list...

The Internet Pioneers Collection

&#8220;The Internet Pioneers Collection of SocialStamps recognizes the following indelible innovators who brought the Internet to the world, and in doing so, ushered the official start of the Information Age as we know it.&#8221; &#8211; lettrs CEO Drew Bartkiewicz

 

[JulesMaximus]

Nah, I wish.

I was on Compuserve young, and never had AOL (point of pride), but I feel like to claim this honor you need to have used Usenet back in the 80s when it was used for talking and not stealing.

I had AOL for about 3 months and then switched to Earthlink. Went from that to cable modem as soon as it was available in our area.

I'm not sure that makes me a pioneer of anything at all though quite frankly.

 

[Linux23]

I invented the Internet with Albert Gore so yes I am a pioneer.

 

[vi edit]

Was doing modem games of Wolfenstein 3D in '91. Got on the 'web in 94 with Prodigy. Had one of the first cable modems in my town in eastern Iowa in '99.

 

[vshah]

not quite old enough for that. First got online in '90 iirc. messed around with my dad's work laptop in the late 80s though. set a bios password on it which I promptly forgot...

 

[DrDoug]

I'd say I was an "early adopter", but not a "pioneer". Pioneer would be somebody that helped develop and mold the internet into what it's become.

I've been online since... 1988 or so? I've had pretty much every speed of modem along the way (including ISDN) and was clearly one of the first in the area to get SDSL (yes, they use to offer synchronous DSL) and I was so early on the Time Warner wagon that my email was <firstname><last initial>

I've been on USENET, BBS, IRC you name it . I've been on beta and Q/A tams early gaming services like TEN and MPLAYER.

I've worked for BBN, NAP.net, GTE-I and other carriers along the way.

Sounds similar like me... I've been online since '85 (BBS, UseNet, irc), the early game service PlayNet, CompuServe (pre & post internet). Every time hardware/connection types changed that allowed for a faster connection, I moved to it. A very spendy habit in those days but when you were desperate for speed you spent.

Early adopter fits me too.

 

[JimmiG]

I got online around 1995 I think on my Amiga 1200 using a 28.8 kbps modem.

 

[Puffnstuff]

My first time on the net was through a prodigy interface but I bounced between dialup providers (earthlink, aol). Then I began dialing up the university using a Unix log on prompt. All text with very rudimentary graphics and no sound with text commands to get to various destinations. I did the bbs thing for a while but when normal ISP's began to spring up I got a dial up account. I wasn't able to get onto cable until 2003 where I lived because they were slow to roll it out. When I first moved to Jacksonville they were still in the process of rolling out cable on the side of town where I live so I was able to retain broadband. Now we've got at&t gigapower available but I'm still on cable. Perhaps in the future I'll speed up my connection.

I did however make my first internet purchase back in 1995 with the purchase of a cardinal 28k fax modem which I kept until I got on cable. I remember keeping it in my pc as a backup just in case the cable went out. Now I've got a 4g LTE cellular modem as back up or for mobile computing plus an at&t vdsl connection that is part of the phone plan so things have really changed. If the cable goes out now I just unplug the Ethernet cables from the router and plug them into the at&t vdsl box and keep on going.

 

[kranky]

I sent email with a bang path addressing via UUCP.

If I wanted to email user joec on a machine named filebox somewhere, you had to know enough of the network topology to understand how to get from my machine to filebox. So I might have to address it to pdp11a!r40!ingr!filebox!joec . pdp11a would be the machine that my system hands off email to.

That described the route from my machine through other net-connected machines to the machine where joec received his email. You can see how fragile that system would be.