“Get off the computer, I have to make a phone call!” -My childhood

We actually went to a local department store (Karstadt), where they had a few computers lined up for people to play around with. It was all really expensive and very very beige, as was the style at the time. So we went there to “try out” the computers until the store clerks would approach us, eyebrow raised, asking if we were intending to buy one. Yes Mister, I am 10, and I would like to buy this computer that is about 5000 times my weekly allowance! I used to visit a neighbour who lived in the same house who actually had a computer that was hooked up to a TV. He was developing a game for it, and I was his alpha tester. It was way cool. It was so long ago that I forgot what the game was really about, but I loved going there and playing it everytime he finished a new part of it. Later, my mother would buy an Atari Mega ST 1 with an SM124 screen and one of those break-your-wrist mouses they had at the time. She had to chase me away from that to get any work done. It wasn’t until 1993 that I would get my first own PC that I could use as much and as long as I wanted. Internet I got when I got a 14.4k modem. Dialed in to a BBS first, which only gave me usenet. Then later, the first internet provider opened in our town, and so I had ‘real’ internet. But damnit, did that shit cost money. Not the internet access itself, but the fees for the phone line, because we had to pay per minute even for local calls.

I’d say good times, but then I remember things like having to edit your startup files every time you wanted to play a different game, and how slow and horrible and expensive (not to mention beige) everything was.

I remember my, well, the house’s first computer, a Windows 95 machine (no idea about the actual specs). Shit was magical to my then 5 year old eyes. The internet only came some 3 years later and time online was heavily regulated because of the phone bill, also because someone might be waiting for an important call or whatever, which was usually my older brother waiting for a friend or girl to call him.

Removed by mod

I built my first website without access to internet. Just locally for me and my friends.

Shit, I remember when our public library got some fancy new computers with an internet connection which was super high tech at the time. Two of my buddies and I rode our bikes down there and we couldn’t believe how cool this new thing called a “chatroom” was. Like… there were other people on there just talking to each other, long distance, mind you, and FOR FREE?!?!?!

Be me, 6 or 7 years old, scrolling through BBS stuff for many hours, blissfully unaware of our ISP being long distance until my mom realized what was happening and totally freaked out

I remember sharing porn on floppy disks in highschool. I didn’t have Internet yet so a few of my friends were gods among men.

Click here if you’re over 18?

Not much has changed there. Unless you live in a nanny state of “small government” and “save the children”. Bitch you turned out fine! Let em rub one out in peace.

But only on weekends when dialing in was cheaper.

As a kid, all of us nerds got our own computers eventually after much begging. (Commodore 64s and such.)

And occasionally, we had the magical moments when we got to visit the occasional person who had a big computer. (PC clones)

No information superhighways yet!

10? I guess if “Compuserve over slow dial-up” counts as “the information superhighway”, then sure. Web browsers almost certainly weren’t a thing yet. Hypertext had more-or-less just been invented.

In the mid-90s my dad bought a Compaq Presario and the LucasArts games multi-pack. X-Wing, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, and Indiana Jones. Amazing. I was like a God.

I also remember playing a game called The Neverhood, which was a claymation liminal space game. Gave me nightmares of being trapped there, but it was still one of my favorites.

I used to phone the internet and sometimes it’d be busy and I’d have to phone it back later.

Old enough to remember a world without the internet.

One of my buddies had a AOL birthday party where we got the internet for “30 days free” and we just spent the time taking turns chatting with people in chatrooms.