With the introduction of Napster and ICQ, the computer quickly changed from a pure information/entertainment medium to a rabbit hole of time-wasting overnight - purely due to the internet. If you are not familiar with ICQ, it was essentially the first online instant messenger. Its icon was a flower and you were assigned a unique user ID number, much like a phone number. When you wanted to connect with people via ICQ you had to give them this number. The flower icon had different and different icons associated with it to indicate your level of availability to chat. This meant that the days of actually having to call a girl on her home phone were long gone. You didn't have to worry about some girl's dad picking up the phone on the other end of a little brother or sister listening in on your conversation. Similar to how teenagers use text messaging and apps on the phones without ever actually talking to someone. I felt like I used ICQ for many years and really did not get into AOL Instant Messenger until I was in college. Looking back, ICQ, meant the first time where I started to assume how people felt about me purely based on online interactions (based on an icon, an availability color, or a non-response).
I will most likely have many posts about Napster simply because it was such a big deal to a kid with limited disposable income. To say it was a game-changer for a music lover is a gross understatement. Not only was it an amazing medium to illegally obtain music, but it also indicated a culture shift. It introduced the modern pirate. Long gone were the days where I had to scrounge up $15 to purchase a CD. I could now just download individual songs that I liked and listen to them over and over without any cost. This obviously was dependent on the very limited space on my Gateway 2000's hard drive :). Like many my age, that did not have access to a T1 line, you woke up each morning, opened Napster, and tried to find a college kid's stream who had the song that you wanted and click download. You really hoped for someone who had a T1 line on the other end, even a DSL, but you would definitely take a hard swallow and settle for someone with a 32kbps connection if it really was a song that you wanted. There was one obvious caveat to all of this. My parents wanting to use the phone. I can remember many times being 75% of the way done downloading a song and my mom would pick up the phone and completely cut off our modem's connection - thus stopping the download. That simple. I then crossed my fingers that I could find another acceptable connection to finish out the rest of the download. That bonus track from your favorite artist that was only found on the Japanese release would have to wait.
It definitely was the wild west days of the internet. I think that many in my generation are such proponents of net neutrality because we grew up very much rooted in a culture of Internet piracy. We weren't taught digital citizenship - we were flagbearers on the Queen Anne's Revenge. You can't tell us what to do with our internet :). We were not accustomed to paying for things that we could find free. I continued to download songs illegally all the way into college until it actually hit home that students at my university were being fined thousands of dollars for illegally downloading songs. Money I did not have and a risk I was no longer willing to take.
I can still picture it. Me sitting in front of our desktop, playing Command and Conquer, chatting with some friend on ICQ, and downloading Len's Steal My Sunshine (not buying that CD).
No comments:
Post a Comment