caught in the Web

cross-posted at LP

I was talking to two women at university last week - one aged 40, the other 20 - and was surprised to learn that both of them still write their essays by hand. Sure, they both have computers, use email and the Internet, but they said they couldn't "think" and edit via the keyboard.

I clearly remember making the switch from writing by hand to writing onto the screen when I first started using a computer - way back in 1983. (I managed to bypass typewriters altogether, in a quirk of my own personal history.)

At first I had to write my articles (I worked on a magazine) by hand, type them into the computer and then edit them. I couldn’t do original thinking while typing. But it didn’t take long before I was able to bypass that first handwritten draft and be mentally creative via the keyboard. Now I can’t for the life of me remember how I actually wrote university essays by hand back in the 70s - the writing/editing process is so enmeshed for me now that I can’t imagine not being able to revise every sentence 20 times as I go along - including immediately after first writing it.

In the same way, I now can’t remember what life online was like before Google - yet I was online for years before they were. Yes there were other search engines, though I don’t recall using them in the everyday way I now use Google (and occasionally other engines.) (Which isn’t to say I didn’t use them - I remember using Excite, though not every day.)

What was life online like when I first ventured into cyberspace in early 1996? I wish I could remember what I looked at on the Web the very first day and how I knew where to look. No one else I knew in real life went online, except to do email. Well, if they were delving into the Web, they didn’t talk about it to me. I did keep a notebook of URLs which I visited in those first months (before I figured out how to keep bookmarks). I stumbled from site to site (and back again), following links and suggestions according to my interests. I’d type the full URL into the nav bar and wait for it to load (dial-up, of course.) I looked in on Usenet and subscribed to a few discussions there. Primarily, I joined email discussion groups (known as listserves), which I found via websites. (This was years before Yahoo Groups.) There were also lists of lists (one was known as Lizsts, in fact). I can remember reading a book guide to cyberspace which gave me ideas for where to go.

It was very much like reading a science fiction novel and entering a world that was somehow partly in my own head and partly in the book - or in this case, in the computer. At that time, many years before it became usual to see URLs on TV or in advertising, cyberspace was almost like a hidden, closed world of its own. Of course it wasn’t closed (else how would any of us have got into it) - yet it was seperate from the “real world” in a way that it isn’t today. In those first few months, each website felt like a different character or place within this strange new world. And then the human characters began to speak their roles in the email groups I belonged to - which I now think of as very much precursors to blogworld. Very quickly I had an entire cast of “characters” carrying on a conversation in my mind, who no one else in my life knew.

A major characteristic of this Web was that it was American. I’d visited the US and had American friends (who didn’t live there), but being online was like suddenly being inside America in a way that was disconcerting. Of course there was the odd Australian or Canadian voice, but the WWW in its early days was very dominated by Americans, who spoke to each other as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. (Has anything changed?)[No offence meant to my American readers!]

Fortunately there is no beginning date for the World Wide Web which can be marked as an official anniversary. [Imagine how tedious that would be.] There are only private anniversaries. I began thinking about all of this because one of the email lists I belong to has begun making plans for a real-life gathering to celebrate 10 years of our group next year. That in itself is no longer unusual - I’ve belonged to another online group for even longer. I’ve met several cyber people in the flesh and made ongoing friendships with some of them, such that I almost forget that I first met them via my computer.

Yet it’s fascinating to me to go back and think about the mental shifts I had to make when I first went online. Cyberspace was literally a mind-expander! It was as though the internal architecture of my mind changed - but I find it very hard to describe this even to myself. I now find it hard to remember what I thought about and how I thought about it before I was “connected”. [Occasionally I feel nostalgic for that state of mind - but not very often.]

I was thinking that perhaps the analogy was in trying to remember what it was like before I knew how to read. But that analogy doesn't quite work as I was a young child then and the online revolution happened to me as an adult. Besides, I know lots of people (including co-parent) who still hardly ever if at all go online but who of course have rich mental lives - and read a lot!

I wonder if younger people who’ve been online since childhood or early teen years have that experience or if their brains just wire themselves around the fact of cyberconnectivity.

Can you remember first going online? Where did you go? How did you know to go there? And how did it feel, mentally?

Comments

[elsewhere]

That's an interesting question...I remember using Netscape (rather than explorer) for the first time in about 1995, when people used to talk about the 'information superhighway'. There was this sense of a vast universe being out there but not quite knowing where to find the bits that might be of interest. I was really more into emailing and chatrooms before I started navigating the internet.

As for writing essays by hand -- I'd be lucky to be able to read any of it. There's certain aspects of editing that computer technology has obviously made a whole lot easier. Word processing has become so much a part of me, I can hardly imagine writing without it.

[Kay]

I first went surfing the www when Jerry Garcia died (1995?) and my brother found a website about the Dead for me - I looked at it and started following links... I remember being amazed by all the stuff out there, and also never seeming to get anything actually read because there were too many links to follow.

I'd just come back from living in the States at the time and was staying with my mum, who didn't have internet access, so it wasn't for another year or two that I got my own access. Still, I can hardly remember what it felt like not to be 'connected'.

And as for writing essays by hand! I did do that for the first year and a half of my undergrad degree, but I can hardly imagine it now. I do still occasionally do creative writing by hand, but usually it's on the computer. I often do extensive edits on paper though.

[Jennifer]

I too, found the web in 1994 or 5, when I was living in London. But I've never managed to get into use.net etc - only ever the world wide web.

I remember trying to persuade the small (100 or so employee) company I worked for in 1996 that they really should get an email address, and then perhaps email between employees. It took a while.

As for typing - I've always been a 100 words a minute typist and a terrible writer-by-hand. I've been typing everything possible since my mid-80s university days.

I'm reading a World War II history at the moment, and it's amazing me how little everybody knows about what is happening elsewhere in the world.

[Lori]

I always found writing things out slowed me down because my mind was racing faster than I could write. And then I couldn't read my handwriting half the time. I found doing written exams in recent years a bit weird after doing all the other work on the computer. It was a bit of a shock to my poor left hand, trying to write for 1-2 hours.

I was going to write about my early online experience but I was a bit verbose...I'll just say I first was online in the late '80s so it has changed a lot. Will probably post about that myself soon.

[Lori]

Will try this again. Keep trying to write something but either get interrupted or hit a wrong key or something and lose it all.

Anyway, I first used the Internet back in 1988-89 when R got a modem to access his uni account. He used it for work and I used it to "surf". I became pretty good with basic Unix commands back then and could ftp files with no help at all. The web browser (Lynx) was completely text-based and I became a proficient web surfer, I guess. Most of the sites available must have been universities, government, and similar. I don't recall many commercial sites. It was very much like peering into a secret world and having pathways all over the world. It was also like having an exclusive membership, in a way. Years later when the WWW came out, it was like having your secret hideaway invaded.

Anyway, we signed up with a couple online services over the next few years. First was Genie where we paid $6 an hour to use their services. No Internet access though. Then there was the great plan through Delphi (20 hours for $20). At some point Delphi offered Internet access, but it was still using text-based browsers.

A short while after we came to Australia in 1994, we spent $500 for a 2400 baud modem to access a uni account locally and later accessed our own dial up through Apana. After D was born, I used to read the newsgroups for parenting, mainly misc.kids. I also signed up on parent-l, a list for breastfeeding moms and attachment parenting. Being in a new country with a young baby, I was very isolated and this became one of my main social outlets. Much of what I know about breastfeeding came through the experience there.

I don't recall the point when we started using a graphical browser. We had been on Atari and Amiga computers and I think we did try out the graphical browsers but I have no idea which ones they were. I do know that by the end of 1997, my parents had gotten a computer and Internet access. It was just after I had suffered through the fetal demise of my second pregnancy and was spending heaps of money on overseas phone calls. This progress made communication so much easier for us. I also made use of online support groups for pregnancy loss while I needed it. I don't quite know how I might have coped without it. I think having a certain anonymity really helped in that situation.

Most of the groups I had joined back then, I left after some time. Mostly because I didn't need them any longer. The due date list for N was different. I wasn't active before he was born but I have kept involved to varying degrees since then and have a number of people who I consider friends that I have never met. It's always interesting to consider how likely I would be friends with some people if I knew them in person. It's really hard to know. I think in that group, there's been a certain amount of sharing that I did from an earlier stage than I might have in person. Even though we "knew" each other, there was still a certain amount of anonymity. It's a very different type of interaction than face to face relationships.

I can't think of more significant changes since N was born. Everything is bigger and faster...also there are a number of different websites that seem to become fads...And it is interesting to consider how recently Google replaced Excite and Altavista for my searches.

On reflection, I think the Internet has given me the tools to become more social than I have ever been. Not that I've been a loner but I am pretty shy when meeting people and in bigger groups. I think the anonymity has played a part in allowing me to become more outgoing...although I still find myself feeling shy, even online. R finds that really weird but I don't.

Anyway, that's experience in a rather big nutshell.