Once upon a time, a long, long time ago before there was wireless, DSL, two merry girls were walking along the street talking of boys, fashion, and music. The year was 1998. I had just finished high school (equivalent) and was getting ready to go to Engineering school. At that time the whole Internet thing had just reached us folks in a big coastal city small coastal town in
Being the true cheapskates they were the theory class was always a lot longer than the practical. So most of the time we spent in learning about CPU, MU, ALU etc and hardly any time in front of an actual computer. As for the Internet, that was just like bait for the fish -which we fell for headlong. The everlasting theory classes ended one day and we were allowed entrance into the inner sanctuary with the freezing air-conditioning. We looked reverently at the computers and our hands itched to click on Internet Explorer which would take us to magic places. I especially wanted to visit the website for Prince Edward Island. At that time I considered that to be my ultimate dream and idea of earthly bliss. But it was not to be. The time in front of the computer was to be “solely used for the purpose of enhancing our knowledge that has been assimilated in the theory classes.” But as for Susan and I, since the only thing we accumulated were black looks from the teacher, we really had no clue as to what we were supposed to be doing.
We started clicking around and discovered MS Paint and then proceeded to draw our teacher. At this point I am not sure if that was part of our theory class or not, but I can assure you that the teacher did NOT look as bad as we painted him inspite of his slick well oiled hair and thick glasses. Looking back, I am totally amazed at our maturity at 17 years of age. It is something to be proud of.
So four days went on with theory and practical with not even a hint of Internet and finally on the fifth day, they took us to the conference room and told us that today we would be learning about checking emails. By that time we were too disillusioned with the system to expect anything, nonetheless went dutifully. Mr. Teacher came in and he was in his element in this setting and surpassed himself. The whole thing was way over my head. I very vaguely remember him talking about firewalls, plug-ins and what not. At the end of his monologue, he looked at us and asked: “Are there any questions?” There was silence in the room. I do not remember now a single thing that I learned there, but this memory stands out in my mind. A slightly older man in his late forties raised his hand and asked: “Could you please explain how to check email again?”
7 comments:
I'm impressed by anyone who can make it through those classes. I had one required computer course in college, and I never understood what was going on. Thankfully, there was a guy in there who had a crush on me, so he always helped me out in the lab. I wasn't interested in him in that way, but I certainly took advantage of his offered assistance!
Hehehehe... yes... I love to remember those early days of internet. Dial-up, when you had to unplug your phone - and we had no cell phones yet, so when we were waiting for an important call internet was out of bounds. Ah, life. I even remember life *gasp* BEFORE we had internet. Somehow we always managed to keep ourselves busy and entertained ;)
Oh Anna, I do remember life before active Internet. It was a mere 5 years ago for me. Dial up-where you had to unplug the phone was what we had in my parents house until 2 months ago.
Ewokgirl- I barely made through the classes. Like I said I hardly remember anything from then!
I don't remember a single thing from any computer class I took! We had these little apple computers in high school. And what would now be considered dinosaurs for graphics class.
In college I took a PowerPoint class. Again...nothing made sense. Now that I need it, I have to figure it out all by myself!
Now, I wonder what the technology will be in another couple of years?
The first time I went on the Internet, the P.E.I. website was the first thing I checked too - I downloaded some wallpaper and joined the Kindred Spirits mailing list within minutes.
I remember taking a computer class in 6th grade. We learned about strings, and my friend joked about naming hers G-string, and we learned about a new thing called a modem that enabled one computer to call another computer on a phone line, which made us all wonder why in the world one computer would need to call another one? Who would ever use that?
And then someone came along and taught AK, all the intricacies of Internet and major tips about it :)
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