As the original poster on this thread, I will add my $0.02 to this evolving discussion with my recollection of our evolution with personal computers and the earlier forms of social media.

I remember the first IBM PC’s at my office in 1982, with green colored text on a black screen. In those days the major business software for PC’s was WordPerfect and MultiMate (word processing) and Lotus 123 (spreadsheets).

The first PC that I purchased was in 1988, a mail-ordered PC clone, a Northgate PC with a 60 mb hard drive, a 5600 baud modem and a 13” Sony VGA CRT monitor. In 1990, I was intrigued by a new graphical computer operating system called Windows 3.0, which I bought and installed on my computer. With such a small capacity hard drive I also purchased and installed a software program called ‘Stacker’, that would compress the file size of all of the other software, thus providing additional room on my hard drive for more software…. As I recall, you could essentially get the top-of-the-line computer, monitor, hard drive, memory and other features for around $3,000. We upgraded our computer system approx. every 4 years, getting larger hard drives, faster microprocessors, additional memory, bigger monitors, etc. During the 1990’s and 2000’s, we replaced the Northgate computer with PC clones from ZEOS, Compaq, and Dell. Today we have a HP desktop and a HP lap top, as well as Apple iPhones and iPads, all connected via WiFi router and cable modem.


Back in the late 1980’s, the precursor to the current social media were three (3) major proprietary internet portal pay-subscription services available to computer users with tel. modems via dial up linkages:

1. CompuServe – Started as a form of communication between college/university professors and the engineering / technical community.
2. Prodigy – Formed by CBS/IBM/Sears and used a graphical user interface
3. America Online (Aol) – The most graphically oriented communication-savvy and robust of the three, (IMHO) and required the installation of proprietary software from free CD’s.

A number of additional services followed these three: Microsoft’s MSN and EarthLink.
Both Prodigy and AOL offered news, sports and most importantly, email. AOL advanced further and faster when it introduced real time instant messaging capabilities. Eventually, both Prodigy and Aol offered full access to the World Wide Web and web page hosting, Prodigy with their own dedicated web browser and AOL being able to use and be compatible with MS Internet Explorer. Many of us older folks still have and use our AOL email addresses in some capacity. I remember enjoying the IM capability of Aol to communicate with friends, as the precursor to today’s text messaging on our smart phones.

Remember, back in the year 2000, AOL purchased Time Warner, to form AOL Time Warner, for an unprecedented amount of money, in what most people now consider one of the worst corporate purchases of all time….

On a separate topic, I look forward to our country’s citizens coming to grip with the fact that our broadband speeds are no longer the fastest available in the world and that fact will adversely affect our competitiveness with other countries in the future, unless we demand an improvement from Verizon and AT&T. (Probably a topic for a separate dedicate post and thread….)

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2020 BMW 440i xDrive Coupe (Wife's daily driver)
2016 BMW X5M (My daily driver)
2014 BMW M6 Coupe (gone)
2013 BWM 335i xDrive Coupe (gone)
2011 BMW 335xi turbo coupe (gone)
2007 Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG (gone)
2007 BMW 335ci twin turbo coupe (gone)
2004 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG (gone)
2004 BMW X5 4.4i (w/full Aero Kit - gone)
2001 BMW X5 4.4i (w/full Aero Kit - gone)
2000 Mercedes-Benz E430 Sport (gone)
1961 Mercedes-Benz 190SL (owned for 48 years)

Here is the first machine we had it was just a PC:
IBM Personal Computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then when the XT came out we got that & the PC was relegated to a back room in the office (small family run insurance agency) where I tinkered with it & made it into an XT clone.

IBM Personal Computer XT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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BMWCCA # 480346

'72 e6Tii rip
'90 e30iC sold

AVB,

I remember all of those!!!

I got my first job in 1986 at a Soviet electronic plant making chips (mostly for military) and got fascinated by an idea to have my own computer... i found a schematics for an 8080 based computer, i procured all the parts, except for the main processor chip itself (our plant did not make the processors) and... and then i was drafted into the Soviet military in 1988... long story short - after coming to the US in the 1991, I was still hoping to built a computer, but the times were hard, i needed to learn English, get myself integrated (lucky me, I was over 21 at the time and I was NOT precluded to buy my own booze... crazy law!!!)...
Amazingly, I did not have to built a computer, as I could just buy it... can you imagine that?!! I got my first comp in 1992, and read in the russian newspaper that there is "bitnet/eunet/internet" that was invented in the US and people could communicate with each other through computers for free... a phone call back to former soviet union would cost $2.49 first minute and $2.24 each additional with 3 minutes minimum...

To my surprise, nobody knew about this "american" invention and i thought it was made up story in russian press when one dude handed me a 3.5" floppy with AOL... my computer had GeoWorks (alternative to Windows) and the AOL would not load... besides, my comp did not even have a hard drive - it had two floppies... aol would give you 5 hours a month for the monthly fee... a local college offered me internet for $300 a month!!!

good ol'days!!!

it is amazing how far the technology has come - my new android cell phone is hundreds of times more powerful than what i had back then...

gee... i remember all of that... i am old!!!!

To add a little more, in the mid-80's before Compuserve, AOL and the other online services for consumers were Internet-based, there was Usenet:

Usenet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I had Usenet access through our local Hewlett Packard office via UUCP using a dialup modem in our office. We also had some access through our local university while I was there.

Usenet newsgroups, some of which are still quite active, have some advantages over forums:

- Speed. Very important if you're reading and answering a lot (just ask mD ).

- Much lower bandwidth requirements. That's not as important now.

- You can choose your own reader (this is somewhat true using some of the mobile forum aggregators).

- Decentralized.

- Easier to subscribe to most... just find the newsgroup and join (unless it was private, then you needed a password).


P.S. Cabrio... sorry for bringing in the S.I... Cardinal Fang! Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!

I demand a shrubbery as compensation!

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BMWCCA # 480346

'72 e6Tii rip
'90 e30iC sold

Ah yes. When floppies were, well, floppy.

Warm up times for monitors.

Renaming the format command to TAMROF so that users who now had hard drives didn't screw them up.

Dealing with the only two guys in the IT department who didn't feel it was beneath them to work on PCs.

When PC DOS wasn't exactly the same as MS DOS.

Building custom 386 machines with SCO Xenix so that we could have enough memory to run finite element analysis.

Glad we're past some of it.

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2007 X3 3.0si, 6 MT, Premium, White

Retired:
2008 535i, 6 MT, M Sport, Premium, Space Grey
2003 X5 3.0 Steptronic, Premium, Titanium Silver
2002 325xi 5 MT, Steel Grey
2004 Z4 3.0 Premium, Sport, SMG, Maldives Blue

When it comes to computers, some of you are old people.....

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….

No Tech maven here, but my first computer was a Mac 512k, circa mid '85.
I thought it was the cat's azz, then...

I used to occasionally lug it around in a carry bag, mostly to show off, as it didn't 'put out' much stuff, and mini portable printers hadn't been invented then. I gave it to my Admin for her to learn on/use.

My CEO had one then too, and she learned Excel early on, and was a wiz at it...still is, actually.

For all the Apple phans here: See, I did have a Mac at one time.
GL, mD

Attached Images

 

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Ol'UncleMotor
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and 50 Cent Opins...

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My X Page

Hey MD, I had one like it also.

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….