Right away, I bought a 300 baud modem - that's about as slow as you can go, and the only consumer modem available at the time. The entire idea of connecting with the world was exciting - even though I was sort of fuzzy on what that actually meant. I experimented with calling up local computer bulletin board systems, but I also signed up for the biggest BBS of them all - Compuserve. At that time, it was a text-only system. Everything scrolled up the screen. News, special interest groups, and limited text-only games were fascinating, but Compuserve chat was fascinating. The idea that I could hold conversations with random people anywhere in the world (well - anywhere in America at that point), fired my imagination. There were chat rooms of any variety - some created by Compuserve, and others by users themselves - so it was relatively easy to find like-minded people. I still remember the first few people with which I chatted - another recent college student, a woman in her 50's, and others, all discussing issues of world peace! Where would this all lead? I was filled with anticipation for the future!
I still am. Though I was an early user of some social networking tools, and have used it throughout my career for research, inspiration and communication, I really didn't understand what it meant to be a content creator and an active part of an online community.
How and why that all changed is part of what I hope to explore here. I look forward to sharing the journey!
In the meantime, feel free to explore my vlog, blog and audioboo podcast - you can find it all on my blog at http://worldaccordingtorich.blogspot.com
