Recently American Online (AOL) made a stunning announcement: they’re shutting down on September 30 – this year. As in one month from now! What had once been THE email service for many internet users has apparently run its course and – like most lifelong politicians – is no longer relevant.
Introduced in 1991, the screeching sound of AOL dial up served as the soundtrack of those early days of the cyber universe. I definitely remember it! AOL came with my first personal computer in March of 2000. The “You’ve got mail” voice alert was exciting at the time.
The influx of broadband remedied the nails-on-chalkboard tone that signaled a connection to the internet. But, as with dial phones and 8-track tape players, AOL may have become a victim of technology. It’s just what happens with technology and trends.
Despite my initial love for AOL, I had two major clashes with them; the second of which severed our relationship forever. In February 2004, AOL published a piece on how Christopher Columbus allegedly used Leap Year Day of 1504 to trick the indigenous Taino people of Jamaica into providing food for him and his stranded crew. In the comments section, someone posted a completely unrelated remark; something to the effect of “no one has suffered like the Jewish people.”
I have no idea what prompted it, except ethnocentric arrogance. But I replied with a remark that included the term “politically correct bullshit”. Apparently that hurt someone’s feelings, so they reported me to AOL who promptly deleted the verbiage and suspended me from commenting for a short period. In other words, AOL did something that reeked of juvenile behavior – they put me on “probation”.
“Excuse me?” It was bad enough I could hardly understand the customer service representative through her heavy accent. Like several U.S. companies at the turn of the century, AOL had outsourced their technical support and customer service to India and other parts unknown. But, when she told me about the probationary status due to my foul language, I retorted, “You don’t place me on probation! I place you on probation!” I was a paying customer, plus the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that foul language was protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Neither truth would change their cyber mind.
Seven years later I committed another more egregious act – in the minds of AOL leadership. I emailed a nude image of myself to a close friend in a joke message. This time it was AOL who got their feelings hurt and literally shut down my email address. I had to scramble to find another service and settled on Gmail. But I kept thinking – if everyone who used foul language or sent a nude photo got banned from the internet, well…you wouldn’t have an internet!
My father – who was born in 1933 – told me that, as a kid, he thought the voices he heard from the radio were from tiny people inside the device. Radio was a popular form of technology in the 1930s and 40s. Then television, then computers and now…well, who knows what will come up in the future.
Goodbye to AOL. And life continues. Like technology itself, it always does.
If you want to know for certain that someone’s response to your Facebook friend request is sincere, just reply: ‘Great! Coming over this evening! Already have yr address. Bringing nachos, wine coolers, Hydrocodone & baby oil. Can’t wait! See u tonight!’
Don’t doubt me on this one! It’s saved me from countless fake friendships and wasting too much time preparing nachos for the lactose-intolerant!
Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 template for what would become the World Wide Web. Image courtesy: World Wide Web Consortium.
On this day in 1989, the Internet, as we know it, was born – at least on paper. Like film, radio and television before it, the Internet technically had a slew of birth parents. But, for the most part, one man figures critically in its creation: Tim Berners-Lee.
Born in London in 1955, Berners-Lee graduated from Oxford University with a degree in physics. Immediately after graduating, he went to work for a printing firm, but in 1980, he began working as an independent contractor for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. There, he had to consult with other scientists and researchers from across the world, which presented unique challenges with varying time zones, languages and communication methods. To facilitate the process, Berners-Lee began working on a project based on the use of hypertext, a data-specific language developed by Ted Nelson, an American scientist, in the 1960s.
Born in New York in 1937, Nelson apparently was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as a child. His frenetic thought patterns (a hallmark of ADD sufferers) probably led him to create the hypertext system.
Berners-Lee called the prototype of his program “Esquire.” He has been smart and gracious enough, though, to give credit to all of his computing predecessors, such as Nelson. The concept of electronic mail (email), for example, was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a simple file-sharing system and first demonstrated in 1961. That evolved into a system of message transmission MIT dubbed “Mailbox.”
Another early similar program was called “SNDMSG.” That functioned in conjunction with another system called “Advanced Research Projects Agency Network” (ARPANET), which first appeared in 1971.
Accolades must also go to Douglas Engelbart who invented the computer mouse in 1963 and first demonstrated it five years later. Like most inventors, Engelbart envisioned his creation in the usual manner: doing something completely unrelated. In his case, he was driving to work when he imagined “people sitting in front of cathode-ray-tube displays, ‘flying around’ in an information space where they could formulate and portray their concepts in ways that could better harness sensory, perceptual and cognitive capabilities heretofore gone untapped. Then they would communicate and communally organize their ideas with incredible speed and flexibility.” But, even he can’t explain why he called his device (first made of wood) a “mouse.”
Berners-Lee took all of these ideas and materials and composed “Information Management: A Proposal” that he presented to CERN on March 12, 1989. From that, he ultimately created the “World Wide Web.” With the help of Robert Cailliau, a Belgian computer scientist, he presented the first version in 1990 and put it online the following year. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.
His initial goal was merely to help CERN be more productive. But, while Berners-Lee visualized a grander purpose for the “Web,” even he couldn’t predict the impact his creation would have on the world.
Douglas Engelbart presents the first computer mouse on December 9, 1968.
Chief Writing Wolf 