Public Address | System (Home)

Posted at 7:38PM on 21 Aug 08. Permalink.

I've been online for about 13 years I think. It started with discovering chat rooms - one was a pagan one that I just wandered into, and enjoyed their company so much, I was a regular for a few months. I once was a member of a NZ chat room. Fascinating people in a very creepy way, some of them. Most of them were deeply poisonous - I discovered this only because we had a lot of chat meets, and I met a woman who I became friendly with. I ended up going to Hamilton to spend a couple of nights with her, to hang out. Turns out afterwards that she had spread the rumour that I was a lesbian. I didn't mind, really, I just thought it was a bit tragic. I met my very closest friend online - I call her my platonic soul mate. I would never have found her if it weren't for the internet. As I would never have met any of the good friends I have met online. I use the net as a social tool, and a research tool, and everything in between. I use it to arrange meetings, and to meet new people. I really can't imagine my life without it.

Posted at 12:12PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

I’ve never been a cellphone sort of guy. I freely admitted from the outset that I would eventually own one, but I’ve never felt liberated or otherwise blessed with the idea of being able to ping my friends and foes on the move. But there was something truly quite exhilarating in receiving my first email, in the (northern) summer of 1997. I had just finished the military service back home and was waiting for the visa from London to come over here. Suddenly the Internet seemed just the thing, and I had to learn it fast, fast enough to teach my mum how to use it. If you’ve never tried to teach a visually impaired, computer illiterate retiree with no English everything she needed to know to use email, from turning the machine off to switching it off and all the little steps in between, I promise you it will test your pedagogical skills some. It resulted in a couple of typed pages of instructions, a real idiot’s guide (sorry mum) that fell over every time she unwittingly dragged a window one inch to left of its usual place. Fortunately I had a couple of friends who’d pay her a visit when that happened and put everything back in kilter.

The first six months in New Zealand were hard. It doesn’t matter how friendly the local populace was, and how relatively easy it was to find work and a place to stay; they don’t call it uprooting for nothing. But at the same time my immigrant experience - which was rather cushy to begin with, compared to most - seemed almost unfairly easy thanks to the Internet. I could read the paper, email my family, chat with my friends (one of whom had designed a fantastic little IM programme), follow politics and sports. And it was alienating, too, after a couple of hours of such activities you became quite unsure of your geography. I toyed with those programmes that let you know where you are in the world, tracing the route of the information packets, but of course they don’t mean a thing. On the Net - even on dial-up - you really are everywhere at once, or perhaps in a single place of scrambled coordinates. It’s one of those things that really shouldn’t work, but it does.

And it becomes a second skin, so quickly. Everything is still there, those first emails I received thanks to a friend’s account at uni, to the tune of the high-pitched screams of a brick-like modem in the little flat that we occupied above my father’s workshop. (One of them read just, Have you been to the toilet yet? Because my friend-come-tutor had warned me that I’d start checking my email in the morning before all else). All the emails I exchanged with my family are also there, those sanitised and optimistic accounts of my first weeks on the other side of the goddamn planet. My mum got a bit carried away, I suppose: when my father died, she informed me via email. Fortunately, in the circumstances, it happened overnight and I got the phone call before I could read the message. Which is still there, although it’s nine years later and I still can’t bring myself to open it.

Now she doesn’t email anymore, it just became too hard. So last year I got her a new machine and now all she has to do is sit down and turn it on; within a few seconds the grandchildren appear thanks to the magic of Skype. And it still seems almost unfair, that it should be so easy, that it should make us feel so close. Almost, but not quite.

Posted at 12:38PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

So last year I got her a new machine and now all she has to do is sit down and turn it on; within a few seconds the grandchildren appear thanks to the magic of Skype. And it still seems almost unfair, that it should be so easy, that it should make us feel so close. Almost, but not quite.

Giovanni, that's lovely. That closeness-distance thing has made me realise what I wanted to say.

I got into the internet seriously when my kids were little and I was ill. I remember thinking just before I found writing boards and blogging that I was probably pretty much done with this internet thing.

The parenting boards and CFS support groups left me completely cold, but eventually I found a bunch of happy, relaxed, porny women with whom I felt comfortable. Given the way the net lets you drip-feed personal information, it was a while before I found out who was Republican, who was Pentecostal, who was four foot ten, who was twenty or forty or sixty.

But then there were the times when something went wrong, and it really smacks home to you how far apart you are. A friend's child goes into hospital, and you can't help look after their other kid or drop over food. Another friend is suddenly uprooted and moved to another state, and you can't help her pack or lend her boxes.

And the worst thing is when someone suddenly disappears. A few days pass, and you realise you haven't seen them. They don't respond to emails, they don't blog, they don't write, and you have no idea what happened to them. They're just gone.

Should I get run over by a truck, there's a list of people I've never met that my partner has to tell.

Posted at 12:57PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

Should I get run over by a truck, there's a list of people I've never met that my partner has to tell.

I was having this same discussion with an ex-girlfriend who I met via the internet, and who lives overseas. I'm now going to add a page to my will of 'people that should be informed if I die or get seriously ill'.

Posted at 1:39PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

The Grok Parties under the Civic in Auckland
(went to both - still got the smart card somewhere)

Patrick O'Brian and DomaiNZ sueing Alan Brown
(following the discussions and cross postings (sic) on usenet)

Rex at Waikato issueing domain names within an hour (or two) if he wasn't busy - very first in first served
(I got a couple of nice ones which I still have)

And the good ol' SODA awards....
(still lasted longer than Anson and Wammo)

Sigh...

Great times - back in the day...

Posted at 2:37PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

I think we got our first modem sometime back in 1994 or 5, it took up to ten minutes to download our first current affrairs webpage- much quicker to just read a newspaper back then. I seem to recall our ISP was a small outfit called ICONZ or something similar.
When I found myself pregnant in early 1996 I found an online support group/closed members list in the US called 'November Moms' set up for women expecting babies in November 1996:those women and their families became a daily part of my life for almost the next decade. when I couldnt log in for a daily chat at one point due to not having a computer, the US women put together and bought me one -shipped it to NZ in fact!
Ive met some of my closest and dearest friends and lovers on the internet, spent probably far too much of my life online but...
Memorable moments: sitting up the whole of last Christmas night keeping my son company on Skype (his first Christmas in the UK, lonely, cold and without family or friends I couldnt bear to think of him spending Christmas day alone); seeing photos of my cousins and their children posted on Facebook, not seeing them since childhood and being shattered by the ties of blood and family resemblances..the delicious and sometimes surreal conversations with people all over the world you will probably never meet.. MSN in the middle of the night..helping a friend through a crisis..feeling a deep soul bond with someone on the other side of the world...chatting to someone new in Europe and suddenly they have arrived in NZ, are on your doorstep and living in your home..and you know it will be a friendship that may last a lifetime..having scored yourself a fee trip to Europe as they return the favour...I could go on...

Posted at 2:57PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

You know I’m bit unsure of the actual dates, but looking back at the test match records it must have been the summer of ‘93/94. I was a newly minted scientist and I was already pretty familiar with the internet. We did things like download DNA sequences and of course lots of e-mail and newsgroups. Back in those days the newsgroups were pretty civilised places where you could ask questions about methods and get really useful responses, and of course give useful answers when you had them to give.

Oh and there were newsgroups devoted to things like cricket :)!

So there I was sitting in the computer room at work (we had 4 or 5 computers for the whole floor) listening to cricket on my radio and at the end of a post mentioned that I was listening to the test match live. Immediately, I got responses back from a group of Pakistanis and Indians wanting me to jump over to their dedicated cricket channel and give them commentary. So I did. It turned out there were hundreds of cricket mad folk from the subcontinent whose only access to news of their favourite game was the newsgroups. In a matter of hours I was led to the dedicated channel where I started giving ball-by-ball commentaries. There were 3 or 4 of us kiwis giving live feed and we handed over to each other when we needed a break (or needed to do some work). The listeners wrote scripts for us to use so that we could keep up with the play. I think I did 4 test matches that summer, in between trying to do my work. I can’t remember exactly but I think we got a “listening” audience of a couple of thousand at one point.

It was a neat experience and I guess probably was one of the first “live” commentaries of cricket on the net. By the time the next summer rolled around I was too busy to do any more commentaries and I think by then cricinfo had really started up properly. And then we moved to the US where RB’s hard news e-mails were our best connection to home and my connection to cricket was those same newsgroups I had served before.

Posted at 3:32PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

the internet....
early 90's using x-modem to sending 2mb dev files to Australia over 9k6 circuit at 2am cause it'd only take a few hours. The pain of it all

.... then Bulletin boards...with these strange gateway options to other bulletin boards

driving into Mayoral drive to get the disk for the ICONZ, ISP config nice couch...

Fetch , Gopher a regular part of the internet experience (pre browsers)

Downloading the first http server and the first browser (Mozilla) and thinking this may be something cool, even had my hands on a NeXT box

Usenet and the great alt.soc.cult.nz for the taste of home, using awesomely fast internet access while "working" at NT in London (knowing who was running the open dns servers...so important)

trolling alt.pavetheearth

Going to the Java 1.0 release in London and thinking this may be cool, still got the pin!

Nowadays it still blows me away how ingrained the internet has become in our day to day life, no turning round now.

A request....when will there be re-rendering of the PA site for MobilePDA display, we all know internet access by mobiles a given and sites need to be rendered for the format hint! hint!

Posted at 3:54PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

1993 I think. With the help of the IT guy at work on our new SG workstation.

I got access to various .alt newsgroups and archives which contained access to all sorts of information in the days before there was any sort of regulation.

Some of the stuff (all non sexual) which we could freely look at would get you fired, and probably arrested these days, but it sure was fun to read.

Posted at 4:48PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

I had a look at this page about Connecting the Clouds. It has a (non-exhaustive) list of 191 people who appear in the book. Only 17 of those names are women, and six of those are politicians.

I know the internet industry is typically male-dominated, and back in the day it was even more male-dominated than it is now, but it was never that male-dominated.

WTF.

Posted at 5:00PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

In the pre-broadband era, taking advantage of Freenet and ZFree to the max until the loopholes were closed. Including all-nighter sessions of Camper-Strike and the earliest P2P programs. And I haven't yet mentioned when Otago Uni IT dept started relaxing its Internet access policy...

Posted at 5:37PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

Only 17 of those names are women, and six of those are politicians

No Lin_Nah?

Posted at 5:57PM on 22 Aug 08. Permalink.

I know the internet industry is typically male-dominated, and back in the day it was even more male-dominated than it is now, but it was never that male-dominated.

OMG, here they are The men of the Internet

Posted at 12:27PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

I may not know one end of usenet from the other; I may have taken an embarrassingly long time to work out what an RSS feed was; I may get thoroughly confused by pretty much every technical aspect of the tubes. But there is one internetty thing I have on most of you, and that is this: I met my husband in 1997, in what may be *the* nerdiest place on the internet:

Costello-l. The Elvis Costello discussion listserv.

You just can't get a nerdier starting place than that for a long-term relationship. I'm sorry. You can all try, but you will not top it. It is totally ludicrous.

(Moreover, costello-l has been going for so long that it has spawned something like five marriages and, at last count, about five kiddies. It's also where I initially encountered one Mr Simon Grigg...)

Posted at 12:43PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

I spent 1998 sick with glandular fever. I remember very little of that year but one thing I do recall is creeping into my flatmate's bedroom while she was at work and 'borrowing' her computer and internet connection. I really don't know what I was looking at back then but I rapidly discovered that I could fill whole days very easily.

Posted at 1:02PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

OMG, here they are The men of the Internet

And 29 out of the 39 wear glasses. Is there a conclusion to be drawn there?
I wonder.

Anypoo. For all those of you that have lost stuff on the interweb and wonder where it went, have a look at The Museum of Broken packets A curiosity of the net, those poor little lost packets of data that forever roam the net looking for their home.
If you really get a kick out of this you a probably wearing glasses. I know I am ;-)

I don't really have a story as such but there was a time when i sent out an eMail invite to a gallery opening for a friend (1998). I inadvertently sent a flashy graphic as a .bmp instead of a .jpg, it came out at a "Massive" 600K file. I got blisteringly nasty responses from all those that managed to download it and it didn't help the gallery owner one bit.
(hangs head in geek shame)

Posted at 1:14PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

And 29 out of the 39 wear glasses. Is there a conclusion to be drawn there?

I didn't notice that, I was more taken by there awesomeness.

Posted at 2:59PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

And. On second look, I'm sure some of those pix are of the same person, or do they "All look the same to me" ;-)

Posted at 3:28PM on 23 Aug 08. Permalink.

One of them used to be a lecturer of mine.

Is it a gallery of people influential on the internet in some way, or just strange looking?

Posted at 4:40PM on 24 Aug 08. Permalink.

I met my husband in 1997, in what may be *the* nerdiest place on the internet:

I think that just may be one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. See, that's what I love about the Internet as social tool. It brings people together who may not have otherwise met. Just awesome.