Have you heard about this thing called “the Internet?”

I love this newspaper article (below) from November, 1994, about the growing popularity of something called “the Internet.”

And I love it not just because I wrote it — and earned $25 for the effort! — but because it’s always fun to go back and see how we described emerging technologies when they were new. When the U.S. space program was ramping up in the early 1960s, magazines like Life and Look promised we’d soon be living on the moon and commuting to work by jet pack. Imagine how the newspapers in the late 1800s explained blimps to your average Joe?

When I wrote this piece for the local newspaper 30 years ago, the Internet was still a newfangled concept for most people outside of academia. Google wouldn’t be founded until four years later, in 1998, and commercial online services like AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe were just starting to become popular by aggressively and repeatedly shipping their sign-up floppy discs to anyone with a physical mailbox. Modems screamed aloud while they downloaded data at 28.8 kilobytes per second. (Today’s 5G phones quietly download 65+megabits per second — truly a quantum leap.)

One of my favorite things about this article is how I had to put so many words and concepts that are commonplace today in quotation marks and explain what they are: “online,” “e-mail,” and “cyberspace.” And, yes, I used the term “information superhighway.” More than once. It was a simpler time.

Finally, another thing that made me hold onto this clipping for so long (other than the fact that that’s my wife in the picture) is my interview with a friend of a friend named Bill Duffy. As a serious Star Trek fan, Bill could see the future, and it’s people like him who always give you the good quotes just as the interview is ending: “I have little doubt” he said, “that the computer will someday outmode the telephone as the way we communicate.”

How right you were, Bill. Outmoded, indeed.

(The article is below if you’re inclined to read it. If so, thanks! And I’ll see you in “cyberspace” on the “information superhighway” real soon, LOL.)

Who’s that girl in the picture logging into AOL?

4 responses

  1. Suzanne Avatar
    Suzanne

    hi David! I’ll miss you on Instagram! Surprised you’re leaving because Zuckerberg’s announcement on no longer censoring conservative speech. That to me is a great thing. Even more surprised that you as a writer would be offended. Anywhoo I hope all’s well and will miss seeing pics of your beautiful family and fur babies. Take care Suz

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    1. david grady Avatar
      david grady

      hi there! glad to get your note. it’s not really about being offended it’s really about the new policy of allowing speech that denigrates trans people. The world is exceedingly hostile to kids/young adults like my Ethan and i just don’t want to participate in an environment anymore that won’t discourage anti-trans rhetoric. No one should be able to call Ethan “it.”. it’s gonna be hard to quit those apps – really liked being able to see friends and family and being able to overshare pic of the fur babies.

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      1. Suz Avatar
        Suz

        oh that breaks my heart! No one should experience that level of bigotry. Ethan is brave and I hope he finds life becomes more and more welcoming. Best regards

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      2. david grady Avatar
        david grady

        me again! so like a year ago i was at a dog park in mashpee and some guy just randomly started taking shit about trans kids and how the teachers encourage it and how all the trans kids are mental. like, out of nowhere. but not really out of nowhere, because ethan was there with me and the mutts. ethan who looks so trans! so i had some words with the guy and i found another dog park. Meta changing its policy on what kind of language is tolerated — words, not viewpoints — concerned me. Words suck. i’m not really concerned about Meta’s revised stand on content moderation, which i DO think is problematic, subjective and prone to abuse and impossible to scale). But at the end of the day, insta and threads are just dog parks i’d rather avoid. Julia shocking us with her unexpected gay marriage (so happy for her) and the shit i’ve seen them get from strangers in public in their 5 years together has made me a little militant, i guess! unrelated – i still hope to randomly bump into you on the cape.

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