The Early Computer Adventure

Before the Great Web:

My first encounter with a computer was not with the internet. This computer was an old fashioned computer with DOS and could take I believe (it was quite some time ago) that both the still standard floppy disks and the old floppy's (like 5 1/4 inch or something). It had games on it like Leisure Suit Larry, a football game with only X's and O's for the graphics and various other games of simple design and great fun. However the internet, at least to everyday consumers was unknown to me at the time.

My next computer experience was a Compaq. It had Windows...3.1? I'm not sure, but it was whatever version of Windows that came out before Windows 95. This computer could play games far advanced to that of the old computer I had before. It had early word processing programs and an array of programs that I, at the time, had no real use for. Shortly after my family acquired the computer, it became useful for another reason besides games. It had THE INTERNET! We had some sort of dial-up service, the only type of internet connection offered to really anyone at the time. As opposed to modern times where you are connected to the internet at all times if you have a broadband connection, the computer was required to dial in through the phone lines to some computer far away to keep and hold the connection while the internet was being used. A password prompt came up, guarding your internet from unknown use by someone who might enter your house with intentions of accessing the increasingly useful tool. We used Netscape. I had no idea what it was besides a program that let me access the internet. I particularly liked the ships steering wheel they used as an icon which I'm not sure if they still use today. I remember over the young years of my life, using that computer and the same internet from what I assume was the same provider, but little things (that eventually became very unlittle, were growth. The internet seemed almost like a plant. Things grew, the plant was receiving copious amounts of fertilizer in the form of information from all different sources and parties. Not that the internet couldn't have been something of a community garden, but the additions of information from anyone who had access and the know-how to the internet made for certain areas of the internet to become unhealthy. Broken links were everywhere, false information seemed to grow exponentially, pornography started infiltrating seemingly respectable sites in the form of adds and banners and in the present day pop-up windows. However, it wasn't all bad. Certain areas of the internet were flourishing brilliantly, growing fruit and flowers and looking very healthy. Someone had tended to these branches of the vast virtual organism quite well with proper information, know-how and design. To this day, it had gone on almost exactly in this way with the only difference in the speed and growth of the internet as a whole. Pretty impressive whether for good or bad.