When Computers Talked: The Dawn of AOL
The Digital Deliria began with the sound of computers talking. A call and response song as natural and old as time. Like two birds echoing from corresponding hilltops to make a connection.
The digital bird speech sounded aggressive to human ears, yet somehow irresistible to listen:
Beep, boap, beep, boap, beep, beep, beep (The Call)
Zinnnnnggggg pulse, pulse, ahhhhhhhh (The Response)
Guuuurrrgle zing (The cooing bird, pleased to receive the response)
Zong, Zwerg, ZWERG! (The excitement builds to…)
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH……
White noise. A static, where the call and response joins to one connection. Where noise is actually signal. Computers finally in coitus.
Then, the world opened up. The pixel wind of the Information Superhighway began blowing back your hair. It was all new, and it was called the Internet.
Once you fostered computer coitus, you too were one with the web. At once unfamiliar, yet so sublime. Something within the white noise signal clicked subconsciously in our brains – that unlike a uselessly garbled TV channel, this static instead meant delivery of something much more. Infinite information and connectedness.
And just like that, a whole generation was hooked.
How Did It Start?
In a word: AOL. America Online… a world where “always on” was not “always so”. The ability to check email or text messages immediately at all times of day? Never. This stuff required patience.
Patience began by following the curly, stretched telephone cord from the kitchen to the bedroom. That’s where you’d find the person to boot off the phone line.
Alas: it was only when humans were cooperative, that the internet connection process could begin. Was there an hour-long phone conversation to finish first? – you betcha. (Conversations! What a concept.)
But once the phone boot-off feat was accomplished… we could enjoy the dial-up screech and crackle.
Why Were We Hooked?
In short, a crafty user experience that created Pavlov’s dog-like responses in its users.
For example, “You’ve got mail!” might well translate to “Someone loves and is thinking about you!”.
The mails you received back then were mostly forwarded chains of random jokes. But so what? People “shared” crap via email before they “shared” crap on Facebook. But it was their crap, and our crap, and it was crap among friends – so it had great value.
Then there were the chat messages (aka “AIM” – AOL Instant Messenger). This was the dawn of LOL’s, BRB’s and emoticons, before text messages existed. As soon as you were on the Superhighway, welcoming “bing bing bings” from friends in the digital woodwork greeted you.
With every bing, you got happier and happier to not talk to people by phone anymore. Fast, fast, zippity, zippity, energy, energy – that was the feeling of early chat rooms and instant messages. An addicting recognition, as folks saw their friends come online and proceeded to message them immediately. Ghosting was not a thing.
You had GREAT friends if they sent you ASCII texts or emails: mind-blowing full pictures concocted solely from keyboard characters. But man, it was hard to get them to come through without skewing in odd ways during copy-paste! Why was it that your goofiest friends always sent you the cock-eyed ones, giving you pause to ask: “What the heck was that”?
We, the Pavlov’s dogs, were oh-so-rewarded by these new sounds and sights – all from the comfort of our pressboard desks and vinyl chairs. Many things in AOL were the precursors to the addictive social media “like”. It made us Digital Delirious!
The excitement and motion of “journeying out” felt tangible on the Information Superhighway. (Jeez, where do we ever hear that term anymore these days? OK, let’s put it to bed here and now.) But despite this unstoppable sense of forward momentum, the Internet was oh-so-SLOW. The only thing that held us back from a full-on addiction?: the cursed dial-up speeds!
That and sleepy time. Tired from our evening web adventures, we had to disconnect.
When you went offline, there was no parting farewell of digital bird speech. Just a friendly “Goodbye” ‘till next time.
But once that initial connection was made, we’d soon never go offline again.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
Please share if you did, to help brighten someone else’s! And, we’d love to hear your AOL memories – please post your comments!
Don’t want to miss a future story? Be sure to sign up for our mailing list.