The First Time I Saw the Internet

I remember very distinctively the first time I saw the Internet.

I was ten or eleven years old, in the sixth grade, the year was 1997. These were certainly not the early days; this was two years after the Netscape IPO. Accordingly, the <frame> had been set in the <blink> of an eye. "Internet" was household term and venture capitalists had long since mobilized. Still, at this time, if you went to AltaVista and searched for "Google", you would have gotten zero results. Like myself, the Internet was beginning an explosive phase of awkward growth, which prove to be highly formative, as well as full of embarrassments.

It was at the community college in the town where I grew up. My mother worked there, and my brothers, sisters, and I would go nearly every day after school. One day, the library on the second floor got six public use computers that were connected to the Internet.

My brother Gunnar had at least one inkling of knowledge about the Internet, making him, by comparison, an expert. The first time I saw the Internet, he using it on one of those computers. When I walked up, he was staring at a page of black text on a white background. There was a centered image at top. I was fearful and excited, but remember the exchange of words verbatim.

"Is that the Internet?"

"Yes." He answered pridefully, and highlighted the portion of the text he was currently reading with the mouse to indicate his focus. He still does that to this day.

The highlighting, to me, was of tremendous importance. That was associated with one thing in my mind: the hours I had spent watching my father write letters in WordPerfect 5. On considering the gravity of the erroneous conclusions I made next, my voice quivered when I asked faintly:

"You... can highlight it?"

"Yeah... but it's not like you can edit it." He, too, was disappointed. Having had similar experiences, he correctly guessed what I had assumed.

This shattered a portion of my imagination as quickly as it had been created. I had only seen highlighting in the context of word processors, so to me, it meant I could press a key, and magically replace the current text with my own content.

Just imagine that. In that instance, without know the words for it, I had imagined every page on the Internet was a Wiki. I was heartbroken to learn otherwise, but from that moment on, I still spent innumerable hours in that library on that computer, exploring everything I could find there. It was not until a year or two later that I discovered it was possible for me to create content after all, not just consume it. This is still the one thing that motivates me most: creating something that people all over the world might find useful.