Do you wish...?

Chat about other 80s stuff, on or off SFXB
Rachel
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Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2001 1:20 pm

Do you wish...?

Post by Rachel »

Do you all wish the Internet had become widely available sooner? I do! It would have been cool to encounter other fans of our favourite programmes (or books, music, etc.) at the time! And in 1988, when virtually everyone I knew was obsessed with Neighbours, I would have loved to find other girls like myself, obsessed with Anne of Green Gables instead! Oh well, I can find them now; better late than never!
AndyThomas
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Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2001 12:42 am
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Do you wish...?

Post by AndyThomas »

Now that's an interesting question. Bearing in mind the Internet has only been in full flight for 7 years or so in a "popular" way, I suppose it'll be another few years before any judgments can be made about whether it is "good" or "bad". I think it probably would have been good to have when I was younger - as you say, it can be tricky to find others with less-than-mainstream hobbies. Had there been more kids at my school were computer-savvy, well, I might not have ended up doing what I'm doing! But on the positive side, having had life experience before getting on the Net was also good because it meant that when it did come along I was better able to take advantage of it in in entering into communities and meeting new people - in real life, not just virtually. So like any other tool - it's the use you put it to that makes it good or bad. It may well be that down the line some parents will regret letting their children go on-line at an early age - but this is probably a debate for some other newsgroup!
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
Happosai
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Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2001 1:38 pm

Do you wish...?

Post by Happosai »

Um...don't want to seem picky, but the Internet has actually been around for over thirty years, and was used a lot in the eighties (e-mail, Usenet, etc.), although mostly by business and academia. Don't confuse the 'net and the web...not the same thing!But I do know what you mean. The widespread popularity of the 'net has made it very easy for people with a common interest to come together.Back when I was at school (late eighties), we didn't have access to the 'net, but we did used to go on BBSs...and it was certainly possible to be exposed to objectionable material back then![Happosai]
AndyThomas
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Do you wish...?

Post by AndyThomas »

No, by all means be picky about that - I usually am! I thought someone would pick up on that. Unfortunately the "popular" view (hence my quotation marks) is that the Net popped into being at the same time as the World Wide Web started to kick into high gear, and so the Net has become a bit synonymous with the WWW. I mean, I mainly used newgroups, email and other UNIX stuff when I arrived at Uni in 1994 - I don't think the Uni network Windows machines even had a web browser as standard then, short of Lynx when telnet'd into one of the multi-user Unix boxes! But Durham was good, in that even us mere mortals could get on a HP box in the library and use Mosaic. That was also around the time when PCs started to come of age, beating the other home comps into the ground of course - so it all started to come together around then for the, shall we say, lay person. I was aware of BBS but never had a machine with a modem until as late as 97 when the college I moved to failed to give me Net access. This is going to be one of those things like vinyl records or mobile phones - kids born in this century just won't believe that at some point there wasn't a Net as they'll experience it... This is all far too deep for this time of night, I'm off!
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
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