I remember the first time I logged onto the internet.
It was around 3rd grade.
The entire class was in the computer lab and we were going to do a research project of some sort.
The teacher gave us the web address: www.whitehouse.GOV (with strict orders to not visit whitehouse.COM).
Being a spacey kid who liked to daydream, I didn’t hear the instructions of how to visit the website.
I hunt and pecked the keys, carefully putting whitehouse.gov into the address.
…and nothing happened.
Waited a few more minutes…
Nothing.
Finally, I worked up the courage to ask the girl next to me how exactly the internet worked.
She instructed me to hit the return key.
Oops.
That was all it took.
Everything changed after that. The internet became a fascinating obsession.
A year or two later my parents got dial-up access to the internet.
I spent every hour I could blocking their phone line – buying/selling things on ebay, creating a Geocities website with “hilarious” animations, and reading conversations from weird people in AOL chat rooms.
Since then, there have been hundreds of fun, interesting things, that have happened online. I remember the day Facebook came to our college, when my dream of a video hub finally came to fruition with YouTube, and when I discovered guitar tabs and the ability to learn any song I wanted.
But the internet still hasn’t lost that magical feel that new technology so often does. It’s timeless.
Reflecting on the last year, it amazed me who I was able to connect with, all made possible by the internet.
People in China, Japan, the Netherlands, London, Singapore, New York – all over the map. And of course, I connected with every single one of my favorite writers this year. I traded conversation with all of them.
After all this time online, I finally came to capitalize on the whole purpose of the internet – make meaningful connections with people.
The ability to connect with anyone / anywhere is amazing.
Will future generations who were born into the internet always be memorized by it?
It’s hard to know.
Maybe it will just be so common and natural that there won’t be anything mystical about it. Few people are in awe of being able to travel coast to coast in a 747. The ratio of people who hate air travel to who appreciate it is probably 1,000,000 to 1.
But the internet is young, so who knows? It’s still evolving with constant WOW moments.
This was the year it finally clicked. The internet is a giant connection machine. Everything incredible online stems from that.
The internet still hasn’t lost its wonder to me. It’s still amazing.
—