ledlogic: 06/2014

The following is my entry for the first essay in Internet History, Technology, and Security. In post-evaluation I could have told more about the internet experiences from a personal perspective, from learning HTML and Javascript in a short period of time to working on DHTML technologies using AJAX, technologies like CGI and Java Applets. There are also plenty of social stories about the internet from experiences with muds, roommates, emails, spoofed emails, and user conferences.

Write an essay about how your first encountered the Internet or an earlier networking technology. Describe the technologies you were using, some of the activities you did "on line", and tell us how having a new form of communication changed the way you think about the world. If possible connect your own history to the history described in this class. If your first experience was on another large-scale network like France's Minitel that is a great topic as well. The maximum length of the essay is 1000 words. Part of the reason for a word limit is to make you express your thoughts in an organized and somewhat succinct fashion. It is acceptable to have less than 1000 words. References are optional - use them if it is appropriate for your essay.

I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father worked for several computer companies during my youth. Throughout my childhood he worked on a variety of projects involving several architectures from mainframe systems at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and supercomputers (ETA Systems, Cray Supercomputers and SGI), and using various user interfaces from command line, touch screen, and windowed environments. He would perform instruction in the US at locations sometimes secure installations, as well as Europe, China, and India. In whatever he did, he wanted to understand the systems backwards and forwards. I think as an instructor, he felt a responsibility to thoroughly understand the material, be prepared for client questions beforehand, to really provide the customers the most value during the training courses.

On weekends we would both sometimes go in to his work where sometimes we used green or amber terminals, touchscreen interfaces, or sometimes work directly in the mainframe computers rooms, within eyesight of the machines. To prepare for a class he would teach, sometimes my father would take a computer or system install from a clean state through the installation or upgrade. The rooms were spacious, clean, and though they contained a lot of equipment, from reel-to-reel drives, magnetic printers, and mainframes to terminals and monitoring equipment, they were still airy, open and comfortable. I'd do homework and then learn and experiment with languages using the instructions for corporate classes. One terminal that still sticks in my mind used vector graphics displays to show various sized display status, which was the first time I've seen windowed data with various font sizes, various panels updating in real time at various points on the screen, several terminal windows at once running different processes. Seeing all of that from one screen amazed me.

Using the PLATO system was my first introduction into networking with other on MMORPG games like Moria, a fantasy dungeon maze game with first-person 3-d graphics, or Empire, a 2-d Star Trek team-based starship combat game. I didn't communicate too much with other players, as I was using one of his accounts and he didn't want any work-related issues. But I did join up into groups or teams which offered some insight into team strategy. The PLATO system had email, IM, MMORPG, and touch screens. Later I ended up using PLATO systems in school for algebra and matrix math classes. The Bloomington school district made some arrangement to sell or lease Lincoln High School building in exchange for PLATO systems. However they were in a locked room in our Junior High, and I can remember we only could access the machines only for a few sessions during math class to learn matrix algebra but they weren't open and definitely not throughout the whole school year.

During the 1970s, on weeknights, my father would carry home paper phone terminals which started out like giant suitcases which required a phone cradle, eventually shrinking down to backpack-sized devices like TI Silent 700 terminals that only needed a phone jack. In pauses between when he was working, I had a chance to “hop on”, I'd play text-based human vs. computer games. As the user, I'd make plays via a command line. Each turn the game state would typically post a reprint, so there was a lot of paper used. In the early 1980s, he built a PC-AT clone, and from then on home computers with modems replaced the need for paper terminals for remote work. Eventually instead of just playing games, I'd write my own in BASIC.

At the IT Board of Publications, around 1992 we started to serve digital copies of our publications, newsletters and magazines, using Gopher, a TCP/IP protocol for file sharing. Around that time, one of the Computer Science students on the Board suggested we consider switching our printed student technology magazine Minnesota Technolog publication to the web. We didn't decide to make the switch that year (1994), and it looks like that decision waited until 2003 according to archive.org.

When I was in grad school at Johns Hopkins, the first internet pages weren't yet as useful as library research tools of the day. However other aspects of the internet such as working remotely, downloading scientific software, and visiting environmental field-related USENET groups, which is how I inquired and applied for my first job after graduation from a posting to sci.geo.hydrology by a senior geologist from a firm in Syracuse, NY Working in the field I stayed connected to the internet via AOL which at the time had the benefit of a convenient pool of dial-up phone numbers in every area code. Later as the internet progressed, I decided to take up a former manager's offer and switch fields, moving back to Minnesota to work at an ERP software firm that was doing some interesting communication using javascript and hidden frames, a precursor to AJAX.

I guess what I appreciate now more than anything is the access that having my father working at these companies provided. In private households, at my father's friends or my friends houses, computers were scarce, typically off limits to tweens or teens. Peer children who had computers would show them off, but be unwilling to share. Even later, well into the PC/Mac era, at the University of Minnesota, competing for scarce terminals or space in a computers lab was a frustration. As computers became less expensive, remote online services became available, computer time was accessible 24-7, and having multiple systems was cost-effective, now systems are ubiquitous.

Gefell, M. 1995. Quantitative Hydrogeologist Position Available. Posted to Sci.geo.hydrology usenet group. Referenced via: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.geo.hydrology/8_7OlX4Znas/pqbhTDG3gSAJ

Minnesota Technolog. 2004. Referenced via: https://web.archive.org/web/20120722093045/http://technolog.it.umn.edu/technolog/index.htm

Wikipedia. 2014. PLATO (computer system). Referenced via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)