When Computers Were Neither Media Nor Social

The cartoon that started the meme “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” was printed in 1993, but already this is no longer true. If you’re online, you’re probably on Facebook, Linkedin, and other real-life networking services. Everybody you meet online who could possibly know who you really are is probably going to find out.

Question: What happened?

Answer: The popular kids took over the Internet.

When my family got our first computer in 1984 (Apple II+), my desire to talk about it at school was a sign of social awkwardness. Nobody in their right mind discussed technology with a straight face school unless a) they just didn’t get how the social system worked, or b) they had already given up on any hope of ever being even mildly popular. It was understood that computers were for people who were unable to negotiate the more nuanced planes of human relations, and had to take comfort in the “ones and zeroes.”

There was some truth to this. It wasn’t an accident that one of the first computer games to become really popular was Adventure, a text-only fantasy in which the user discovers treasure, fights dwarves, and negotiates labyrinthine cave passages (ironically based on real cave passages). Read the rest of this entry »