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  • What was your first experience of the Internet?

  • First experience of the Internet.

  • Doing me any good actually didn't come properly.

  • And an angel 1984 with the mo and you're talking 1969.

  • So in the meantime, it was that it was just for a small, select few.

  • I think I have the Internet since I was a baby because my dad was always into it.

  • We started with 56 k modem, and so that took a long time to connect a lot of beeps.

  • I used to be a hum it back.

  • Exactly.

  • I don't think I did.

  • I could do it now.

  • No, no.

  • Did you?

  • Did you do that?

  • It was 15 years before I saw any benefit from that So called breaks through.

  • Yeah.

  • What was that benefit?

  • Just It was email.

  • So the first thing I remember was in 1984 when I was a PhD student at the University of Sheffield on we were connected to the Janet net for the first time, and we got access to email.

  • So a group of five or six of us gathered around the terminal and sent an email to Edinburgh to Andrew Blake, who was recently the director of the touring institute.

  • We sent him an email that said Hello, Andrew Way, then waited three days for it to arrive, and we had to keep bringing him up to find out when it got there.

  • But it did get there.

  • Remember using Olds computers that were next number in my primary school, whatever, like BBC computers and way we're doing some nomad game on that was networked, at least whether it was online.

  • Not sure, I think mostly it was a Web access, and I was building websites fairly younger.

  • 15.

  • It was fun to do.

  • Yeah, just slow loading, noisy Internet.

  • Says what?

  • Remember one of my first memories, I guess, is sitting in an Internet cafe in Cambridge a number of years ago with a one of the first Web browsers.

  • So Wasit, I won't say like Netscape or something like this on opening up the Web browser and actually seeing Web pages for like the first time.

  • Really, that was probably my one of my first memories.

  • I This must have been 25 years ago, so, you know, a long time ago, but a while ago, so I was in university, off Technical University of Poland, and we had we had the first connection toe ARPA net or whatever it was.

  • It's a time on dhe.

  • Um, so what I was doing Yes, I I was never subscribed to the the anarchy mailing list, which was pretty pretty interesting.

  • So my dad worked at BT during the nineties, so he was involved with, like, really helping roll the internet out.

  • So it was quite cutting edge in our house, and I remember we had dial up and having Thio hang up the phone.

  • And every time you wanted Thio use the Internet.

  • I used to drive my mom spare because she'd want us to get off in case somebody called.

  • Well, one of the first times I went online and I start reading frak, which is a, uh, asking only Digital Magic magazine about how to hack telephones in particular and how to get free onto the onto the Internet system.

  • And I just thought of us fantastic.

  • So for me, I think it was gonna run my friend Alan toasts and going on bullet board systems to arrange games of doom to, So that was probably what?

  • Early nineties, 94 95.

  • Like that on then coming home on learning about Apple's E world, which was a whole new world for you.

  • I was really excited that it's gonna be goodies now, isn't it?

  • You're gonna have, like, a picture of your tired and you go to your little email area and it was not like that.

  • It's really bad.

  • Or this whole community off people who are trying to understand this assistant that was still being developed and it was sort of like a an active race of people trying to figure out how it works and how you can subvert it was took forever because the telcos vested interests got in the way they wanted to run the world, and I had to be told firmly that it wasn't just them.

  • So yes, of course, if you were to ask me, uh, how, if it took that long to get to email, how long did it take from the 1969 to get to the World Wide Web on browsers everywhere?

  • Well, none.

  • 1994.

  • It took 25 years for it to get beneficial enough that people could casually visit for the sites and see Web pages and stuff.

  • Quite amazing.

  • I don't actually remember the first time I got on the Internet.

  • It probably would have been at school.

  • I would think we did eventually get America online, But I think I would have seen it first at school, I sort of remember search engines coming out.

  • I remember, you know, the early days of searching for things and sort of being excited by that and also curious.

  • You know, I remember contributing to open directory, something that remember, like that being like an independent director equipment.

  • I remember sort of adding sites to that instead of playing my part in, like, child, contributing to what I found was gonna be the future of how people find things.

  • Yeah, with a really long time ago when I was using one of those Oh, more than, uh, 28 kilobytes that took, like, two minutes to connect.

  • And then my father was saying, What the hell is that?

  • No, I said you have when you take the form, I think it was like back in Spain and something called tear about s and then collapsed.

  • At some point.

  • I was pretty fun, actually.

  • But that's the only search engine that we had at the time.

  • And you couldn't do much with it, to be honest.

  • Yeah, but that's quick.

  • Quite fun of the time.

  • We got an amazing three kilobytes per second download, you know?

  • So that was maybe a, you know, if you were downloading an MP three, that would be quite a while.

  • It would take, as opposed to fractions of a second.

  • You had the phone cable that I was dragging through the whole house, and you'd have to ask the parents because it was like, Oh, they were still I'm from Luxembourg.

  • So we still had a different currency, and it costs, like, you know, five francs per minute to use the Internet.

  • And Grandma couldn't call.

  • Yes, the good old days.

  • I do remember that as soon as I understood what the Internet was and how it worked, I immediately started trying to make my own website.

  • Um, which I did.

  • It was terrible.

  • Uh, that's my My early memories of the Internet are like trying to write html in old camps in a note pad.

  • It was a simpler time.

  • I was thinking last night about building boards and the fact that actually with a social media, we're just going back to doing exactly the same things.

  • No, it's great.

  • You know, we're just posting stuff for people to see if the same stuff, the first stuff I remember, I suppose, is listening to a modem dial up to connect a Web pages.

  • There were that many where pages then, but the ones that did exist seem to be absolutely loaded with blinking, flashing banners saying under construction in garish Sion fonts as the night my first memory of using Internet within 1994 my brother just got back from university and found out about the Internet, and so when we had to have it at home on, so we bought a 28 U.

  • S.

  • Robotics modem for our acorn are comedians.

  • A 3000 which was the family computer.

  • You couldn't do much Web browsing at the time because the A 3000 wasn't much good at it.

  • Um, so I spent a lot of time on tell net chat rooms, so called talkers at the time, it was a bit like a B B s.

  • You could log on and talk to people on kind of a terminal interface.

  • So I spent hours on that, and then it all came crashing down when, after a month of having that, we got the phone bill, which was about £150 basically all of me, or for my dine up Internet talking on.

  • From then on, I was limited to 1/2 an hour a day on the Internet.

  • When I started using the Internet, I I was doing my Masters studies.

  • So Andi it was.

  • But in my country, very in origin in Mexico, in a city called She won't like the dog fell pretty exciting, you know, I guess that's probably one of the reasons I went into computer sciences.

  • You kind of saw this massive opportunity of, you know all this.

  • Suddenly all this stuff's available when there's things we can do with it.

  • And yet let's try and avoid some of them or, uh, visually unappealing fonts.

  • But there's things we can do with the Internet, right?

  • I've never got any better at that.

  • By the way, Websites were a lot simpler back then, so I remember the start of Google.

  • It looked kind of the same, but different font and stuff.

  • It was obviously not quite the job in order is now on.

  • Ben just found websites like hamster dance dot com.

  • I don't remember this s o animated gif to a big thing back in the late nineties.

  • I mean, gifts are coming back a bit, actually, but I just want to say that, you know, we started this, you know, are my generation started the animated GIF in a big way.

  • It's a hamster.

  • Also come.

  • I went on the way back machine, the Internet archive and found it.

  • This is hamster dance dot com.

  • It had fun music.

  • It had lots of animated hamster gifts.

  • It serves no purpose.

  • It'll that's still what the intense for.

  • She's having very little purpose, but, you know, back then they took it to a different level s Oh, yeah.

  • Hamster dance dot com on dhe Other animated GIF related nonsense.

  • Well, this I'm looking here 2000 but I would say 99 2000 something somewhere around that.

  • Wait, you didn't start on.

  • The Facebook didn't exist until 2004.

  • So this is before that where websites were If you look down websites with mostly text hit counters at the bottom of websites were a big deal way people wanted you to know about 1000 people have been to their works like exactly just like that, just like that.

  • If you looked at all, just use that manager that messages about me is that I had a motorbike accident in 1980.

  • Some think it Yvonne or something.

  • It's true.

  • I don't know.

  • On DDE the first big embarrassment I had for company I developed a plaza generator and common list.

  • And then somebody asked, They're interested in the court and I was going to sent it to him.

  • And then I sent it to the mailing list and I wasn't supposed to do this.

  • And then he told me off this Your coat isn't already in Texas, and heads just posted the court with written for this company on the on the Internet.

  • So that was my first and both Vincent misusing the Internet.

  • So I think the first time I remember going online was probably a primary school on dhe.

  • We used to have some math lessons in the computer room where we get to play mass games, very educational um, yeah, E.

  • I remember asking my dad like, multiple times.

  • How do I spell Google?

  • I could never remember.

  • And but before Google, I remember sort of typing in how to program dog home and other things dot com in the hope that it would find, you know, something interesting, but actually websites loaded dice and quickly even on the 56 k modem, because it's really only about five images and text on here.

  • So, you know, maybe it wasn't so bad.

  • I think all my friends at primary school had email addresses by the final year, and we'd be e mailing each other after school.

  • I lived in a house with 11 guys, 11 students and for quite a long time, and I build our own server, allowed everybody to, you know, use the Internet through it.

  • And actually, we first used CO actual cable was an end to end cable, and then at some point we moved to Ethan net.

  • But I was amazed how the time all past, which were just sent on playing text because I wrote the server, I could drop all the packets and I could stay for the passwords and you know, and people didn't believe me that I understand.

  • I just showed one of my one of my shooting friends like, Look, it's like your password.

  • Well, some of the chamber is this way.

  • So I said So I started going online in 1995 so that was very early.

  • So it was things like Go for and tell him that.

  • And arcane library methods.

  • There was no Internet search yet at that time, but we had a well in my house, and we were Was that annoying noise was dialing in get, like, three stages across in a little, eh?

  • Well, person, move along.

  • And then, um yeah, and then every web page, if you like.

  • Okay, loading.

  • Got a bit of a picture.

  • That's yeah, that's usually my early memories.

  • I think when I first started using the Internet, we didn't use the Web that much.

  • The Charlie wasn't up to it, particularly before I got actual TCP I peek.

  • Actually, one of things we did was we e mail people.

  • And I remember that I was a big fan of Babylon five, still am.

  • And at that time, the writer Joe Michael Straczynski had his email address public, and I remember emailing him with questions about things in the show when he would respond.

  • So that was great.

  • You sort of e mailing the people.

  • They're creating things well, my first memories of going online.

  • I was in a student house in the early nineties on a friend of mine, bought a 14,400 modem on DDE.

  • He had somehow come up while discovered some phone numbers for BBS.

  • His bulletin board systems think bulletin board system and BBS is where you could go on to a bulletin board and leave posts or read things or download things from them on.

  • This BBS would allow them youto have a certain amount of Internet time through their system.

  • So that was my first memory of going online.

  • We sent a few emails.

  • We looked at a few things, and I suppose it went from there.

  • Fell world.

  • What's your memories of?

  • Unfortunately, I'm no nearly 52 my memory is too much depleted and deteriorated compared to what it used to be.

  • I can't really remember.

  • It's ridiculous.

  • I can't remember sending a first email.

  • I certainly I was at university between 1985 1990 Do for undergraduate degree.

  • Andi, I certainly member mucking around with the man from smoking around with of axes and playing around, but I can't remember Send an email.

  • What I can vividly remember, however, is going thio synchrotron, which is a particle accelerator week condensed matter physicist aren't so much interested in the particles were interested in the light those particles give off on that was in a place called terror spree, which is pretty well equidistant between Liverpool and Manchester, right in the middle of Liverpool.

  • Manchester.

  • Andi, I remember going there to do an experiment on Dhe sending an excited e mail box and you won't believe it.

  • They've got a browser here and you can actually see images on it.

  • It downloads images and put it without any sort of ftp stuff.

  • Andi, that's my overrating Then we're getting so excited of a bracelet.

  • Was Netscape or not Strip as they used to call it?

  • That brought up the images, and I remember sort of tea, that type of thing.

  • That's my overriding memory on dhe, of course dialogue, But everybody says dial up.

  • I'm sure I had an immediate computer right this is like an Amiga 512 100 car.

  • Remember on Dhe, Remember spending hours downloading the Debian 2.0, distribution from the Internet?

  • This is probably no.

  • It's very like 50 60 mega fights or something like that.

  • Ours now is downloading it so I can install it.

  • I've heard about this Lennox thing.

  • I was interested in it.

  • And so I saw it was downloading these packages and packages like gradually sort of installing on my my meat.

  • And that's sort of one of the earliest things.

  • Remember, I also remember against going on down there Demos.

  • So you know, people would write these kind of demos for the media pushing, the harder it's the limit.

  • And, you know, this is like two or three MCA pieds and you know, it's like ours or downloading just to kind of watch this demo because you used to have toe get that stuff from public domain disks.

  • So you send some money through the post and say, I want these disks and you'd get these disks back in the post and so be able to do that via the Internet was a kind of completely different experience, but you know opposite took a really, really long time.

  • I remember e mailing a friend who's in Australia on a gap here on dhe.

  • They were on a university system over there, assuming that would be doing backwards and Ford e mails.

  • So they this email popped up and they send a reply and thought we'd be back on it.

  • But we didn't go along of mine again from the military.

  • So yeah, it was.

  • It was definitely in its infancy.

  • That sort of system for us as consumers at home, even though the Internet was obviously whatever it already was 20 years old, whatever it was already.

  • I also remember, actually with going back to the Amiga again, spending hours trying to configure something called Ami TTP, which is like a TTP stack for the Amiga on DDE.

  • It was really, you know, I had no experience of using these sorts of bit software like networking software.

  • I spend hours trying to configure it just to get online, and I completely failed, and I think he ended up buying some kind of some other TCP stacks off.

  • First time I saw the Internet was when I was at work on they brought in this computer and plugged in married women.

  • And when this is a great new thing, the Internet we went to the search thing on dhe.

  • It brought back hardly any results because there was nothing on there.

  • So we kind of went come back to us when there's actually things on there.

  • A couple years after that, I got an email address and started.

  • It was actually a good communication tool, and things started appearing on the Web, and it started out being practical then so, But until then, we'd use Janet at university.

  • But it wasn't.

  • Didn't really have Internet connectivity, or you could do was talkto him students and academics for my first memory of the Internet.

  • This disability to see takes images from, you know, other places on Earth.

  • I wasn't there, but I could read what other people were saying.

  • I'm thinking that was fantastic.

  • First Electronique Communications through the shot, our programs at the time, If I recall correctly, they were something called I R C shot Dennis.

  • I don't get it, but yeah, so I don't remember the Chuck teen program that will allow you to talk to people that you haven't met before and that was strange but very interesting feeling, Really.

  • The first things I can remember which can't be the first things, but it's like using IRC using things like the under net on using FTP servers, this type of thing.

  • And I remember we didn't very early on with an O, a CD project that looked at to use off digital technology and the Internet for education.

  • So we started communicating and chatting by IRC chat rooms.

  • Etcetera were in the mass building, which is what they are today.

  • We didn't actually have a connection to the outside world, but psychology did see, you could connect across the psychology.

  • Is computer dial up London log into one of London's nodes on Then you could use the Internet very, very slow on course.

  • It was going across satellite.

  • So you connect to, I don't know weren't very many sites, but there were a few places you could pick up software.

  • So you log into those because it was going over a satellite.

  • You type like letter A.

  • It would take about three seconds the aide to come back.

  • So you start typing and then you get very confused halfway through and have to delete it all on this little painfully slow.

  • But we thought it was wonderful at the time.

  • First time I used it for my own benefit.

  • Waas trying to contact Alan Booth in, uh, here's the M I t.

  • He still is one of the most famous cosmologists alive Came up with the idea of inflation and I wanted to visit the U.

  • S.

  • I was I was at Imperial on.

  • We used to have to go up a corridor.

  • There was the only computers where there were 33 computers at the end of the corridor and we'd have to go to this really dark room on the computers were green little symbols going across them.

  • That was the funds style I need typing your message on very incendiary and you'd hear it got Ping on each of the destinations.

  • It was It is as if it was being carried.

  • Exline was pinging, pinging, pinion, and then eventually it pinned on dot goose and 90 on it said message received, and I thought, Wow, it's the first time and then you have to wait about a day or two days and then I kept going back and coming with one day said, Yeah, come alone.

  • Come on.

  • So I went over so well with the U.

  • S.

  • So Alan Booth, such tender seka to win the Nobel Prize S o I raise a tour.

  • I went to Chicago.

  • I went to every ti.

  • I went to Berkeley.

  • It was great Internet Internet rules our lives on he had contacts with UCL on.

  • So we got into this sort of Internet on our Burnett.

  • Early connections to that.

  • Andi, I started working on email software to try and make sense of all this stuff that was going on.

  • Get rid of all these exclamation marks.

What was your first experience of the Internet?

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