Dumb Mobs, or Keep Your Epinions to Yourself

It was only a matter of time. As more and more of us got online and started to join communities, we began to share our opinions. We became a marketer’s dream, allowing them to gather our most detailed demographic data every time we made a purchase or joined a Yahoo! group. Companies like Amazon began to let us write “reviews” of our purchases and recommend things to others. With a user base of several million individuals, these databases have begun to act as our critical voice whenever we consider an online (or offline) purchase. But how good is the information we receive this way? Will this sort of “mob ranking” replace the advice of trusted sources, and if not, how will these trusted sources establish themselves online? Will it become more difficult to find good information in the flood of online ratings? What kind of forces are at work here? These are the questions I propose to explore.

I was prompted to ask some of these questions during a panel on book publishing during this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference. The moderator had been talking about how the marketing and promotion of books had moved online, mostly due to the web’s reach and the reduced costs involved. I began to think of the way that the critic’s role had also moved online, though not in the way I’d hoped. Sure, people still brought up the New York Times online and some of them even read book reviews there, but more and more sites were adding their own ratings engine and just letting everybody have at it. Something about this made me uncomfortable and I wanted to find out why.

I have participated in this kind of critical activity myself. At the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), users can rate a film out of 10 and write their own reviews which are then added to the site. A bit of a film geek, I’ve endeavoured to rate every film I see, whether it’s a masterpiece, a flop, or just an entertaining bit of fluff. Upon reflection, I think that might be the only way these sites will work. Just as a professional critic must write reviews that fall across a wide spectrum of opinion, each voter on IMDb or Amazon or Epinions must establish the boundaries of their taste. In the case of product reviews, where taste is not an issue, the critic still must establish their standards. Without informing anyone of what we don’t like, sharing what we do like will be meaningless.

However, my experience with these sites shows a different situation. Some users vote only for things they do like. These people would have an average rating that is quite high. Others only point out things they hate, and so their average ratings are quite low. As individual voices, we might be wise to ignore them, but as part of an anonymous mob, they are invisible. We don’t even know how many of them there are. The larger question is how do we know we can trust the ratings presented by a site that doesn’t limit its membership in any way? Sure, it’s democratic, but when it comes to informed opinions, the mob surely doesn’t rule.

Since the machinery behind these databases is hidden to us, I wanted to ask a few experts how they work. Is one better than another? What kind of research is being carried on into making them more useful? Will it really ever be true for me that I will weigh the opinion of the New York Times’ book critic against the mob of user ratings at Amazon and find them equal?

Let’s take Epinions as an example. When I ask it to list dramatic movies in order of rating, I get a very long list of 5-star choices. But I’m almost certain that the people who gave Schindler’s List the top rating were not the same group that elevated Anne of Green Gables to the same lofty place. I can’t be sure, but I’m trusting my gut on this one. I would hazard a guess that most people who take the time to rate their purchases online are a self-selecting group whose opinions tend toward one end of the spectrum or the other.

The interesting thing is how much more influential these algorithms have become, and how opaque they remain. Google’s search algorithm is the big one, but recent stories about the “black box” that is Yelp are also relevant. I wonder if a discussion of these issues might still be interesting, or has the issue already been settled?

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Dumb Mobs, 2003

CBC Radio’s Nora Young hosts a radio program called Spark! and her session was being taped for later broadcast as a show. She spoke with Microsoft researcher Bill Buxton on the subject “Does Location Matter?” which I thought would be about the benefits of telecommuting. It turned out to be mostly about the advances in video conferencing software and how to use it to work and socialize virtually with our colleagues and friends. It was fascinating stuff, but I was hoping the conversation would be broader.

We interact in a variety of ways with others online, but it’s mostly in the course of doing several other things at the same time. I can post a Twitter message, comment on a blog, and carry on an IM conversation all at the same time, possibly interacting with three different people, while at the same time writing in Microsoft Word or working with an image in Photoshop. I call these “micro-interactions” because they usually involve very little time, and are usually quite focussed on a particular subject or question. I’m reacting to a specific thing the other person has posted, for instance. These interactions have a defined purpose and they require little etiquette because online, interruptions can be dealt with later.

I’m finding more and more, though, that when I meet some of these same people offline, I’m finding the interactions more difficult. The idea of giving or getting “full attention” seems a bit overwhelming. I often fear that in offline situations, we won’t have enough conversation to keep things running smoothly. I also dread the awkwardness of introductions and departures, and knowing how long to just “hang around.” These are all non-issues with people I’ve met and known offline, because there is established etiquette. But I find that the more we interact online, the more awkward we get when we can’t interact the same way in the physical world. Among even good friends whom I’ve met online, our face-to-face interactions can sometimes feel awkward. “Just hanging out” can be difficult without some issue or topic to focus our energies toward.

Paul Collins tells a funny but illuminating story in his book Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism. He describes a speaking engagement at Microsoft in which the heads of more than half the audience are down over their laptops, a scene familiar to many conference speakers nowadays. When he asks what’s going on, his host tells him the audience members are watching the streaming video broadcast of the very talk they’re attending. It’s joked that many web geeks are probably mildly autistic, and that their legendary social awkwardness may actually be symptomatic of Asperger’s Syndrome, but it’s not really a joke.

The incidence of autism in general is rising rapidly; some statistics say it now affects one in 100 births. It’s interesting to me that the number is rising just as more and more of our social interactions are moving online. If I’m finding my own feelings and confidence around social interactions changing, I wonder how it will be for the generation of children who are growing up with the sort of “micro-interactions” I’ve described earlier?

Now all of this could just be unique to me. Maybe I’m just having a bad day socially. But I’m glad that it forced me to think about some of these issues. I’m very curious to see what others think about this. Feel free to comment below, or should you see me wandering around at Mesh tomorrow, by all means stop me. At least we’ll have a defined topic to discuss.

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Is Asperger’s Contagious?

Before I continue, I want to recognize all the hard work done by Eli and his group of volunteers and sponsors. But now that I’ve made that disclaimer, I’d have to say that I came away slightly disappointed this evening. Part of it is my own fault. Today was a very long day for me. I was up at 6:00am to travel to a financial services conference being held in the far northeast of the city. My journey by transit was an hour each way. I was only able to attend half the day because I had to get back to my office for a 90-minute conference call with a “social media platform” (ie. blog software) vendor, whose sales representative seemed incredibly unprepared, not to mention tacitly unconvinced by the product he was selling. So as I headed over to Circa night club, I was already feeling pretty exhausted. Nevertheless, navigating a crowd of close to 500 people in a night club setting where the music was turned way up was not conducive to any kind of networking for me. Call me old and crotchety, I don’t care.

The actual case studies were enjoyable, and I took some notes that I think will be useful. But the large setting (with haphazardly arranged plastic patio chairs) made it difficult to find a seat. And the size of the crowd made it difficult to hear all the questions. Overall, I’d divide my complaint into two:

1. The venue was unsuitable: A night club might seem like a “cool” place to hold a business function, but not if the music drowns out attempts at conversation. As well, their inexperience putting on “conference” type events showed, with poorly-arranged seating.
2. There were simply too many people: Close to 500 people is unmanageable for this type of event. Even had I been a bit less tired, I still don’t think I could have managed to introduce myself to many people in a crowd of that size. I recognized about a dozen names on the wiki signup page, and thought I’d have no trouble finding some people I knew. I was wrong.

I was hoping that CaseCamp would be similar to another “unconference” event that I attend as often as I can, Third Tuesday. Though more narrowly focused on public relations practitioners, the events (at least in Toronto) are held at a pub with a function room. The volume of music is much lower, the vibe is more laid back, and you actually sit around tables to listen to speakers. In this way, you can introduce yourself to the people around you first, and continue the conversations there afterward. Most importantly, the number of people hasn’t (so far) exceeded 100. I believe that this is a key issue. While online social networks can scale significantly, in the real world this isn’t possible. Groups larger than 100-150 become difficult to navigate. I certainly felt that way tonight.

What I’d like to see for the next CaseCamp is a “soft” cap of 150 attendees. After that, another group should be created and another venue found for the next 150. In this way, there is value for everyone. If that means featuring different cases at each, then so be it. Presenters could be rotated for the next event if necessary. As well, this makes finding venues a bit easier and certainly less expensive.

Part of tonight’s CaseCamp schedule was the afterparty, in which 5 DJs would spin tunes for the campers to dance to after all the case studies had been presented. People were invited to join from a few other events taking place tonight, such as StartupCamp and CopyCamp. I’m glad that the organizers extended the invitation to these others, and I’m sure they’re leveraging the very expensive rental of Circa night club, but honestly, the last thing I want to do at 9:00pm on a Tuesday night is dance, especially after a 15-hour day.

In conclusion, I think the exploding popularity of the event has even caught the organizers by surprise, and I’m sure that some of these thoughts might be crossing their minds as well. I very much enjoy the concept of CaseCamp and will look forward to seeing what the next one looks like. For any of you who were there tonight, first of all, sorry we didn’t get to talk! Secondly, what are some of your impressions of the evening?

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CaseCamp 7 Report

Borrowing some ideas from Chris Anderson‘s Long Tail concept, Kevin postulates that to make a decent living, an independent creator (musician, artist, writer, whatever) need only amass a thousand “true fans,” defined as people who will buy whatever the maker creates. The challenge, says Kelly, is that the artist has to maintain direct contact with all of these people or they will stop feeling “connected” to you. The good news is that the web has many tools (blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts) that allow creators to maintain direct connections with their fans.

It’s a compelling argument, and the discussion unfolding in the comments is enlightening, with people jumping in with examples of successes and failures. Go over and have a look. Then come back, if you’re a True Fan of mine!

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Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans

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CaseCamp Toronto 7

P.S. One of my favourite things about the game so far is the extensive use of Esperanto, the “world language” that hardly anyone speaks. It’s tied into the hopeless optimism of the Olympic movement, and that gets me all choked up, but it’s also supremely geeky.

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Find the Lost Ring

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them “generatives.” A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Another overriding factor he mentions is trust. I suggest that if you or your business have any connection with the internet (and that’s all of us, especially if you’re reading this!), then you read Kevin’s article immediately. I think there are the seeds of a million business plans in there.

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Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

Shady business practices, drug abuse, sexual harassment, lawsuits. And I’m only about a quarter way down the page. The thread starter has been participating in this conversation for more than three years now. Word of mouth is real.

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Word of Mouth is Real

I found this, by the way, through the very cool, though slightly creepy Spock.com, which had already built a profile page for me before I ever visited the site. I joked on Twitter that that’s probably exactly why it’s called Spock.com.

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Who Wants To Go Camping This Summer?

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What He Said

This became apparent as I listened to several very good speakers, like Joe Thornley and Michael O’Connor Clarke, both of Thornley Fallis (whose employees actually communicate with me regularly in their capacity as PR agents for ThinkFilm, whose films I review for Toronto Screen Shots. Small world sometimes.) Thornley Fallis is a small Canadian public relations firm who have made great use of social media and established a reputation as leaders in helping their clients apply that knowledge. I found myself envious of working in an environment like that, and thought, perhaps foolishly, that maybe I should be working in public relations instead. But I can clearly see that my apparent zigs and zags, career-wise, are attempts to find that ideal environment where I can apply my skills and passions to the fullest while still making a decent amount of money. While I’m not going to be hasty, maybe I should examine whether my skills and experience as a web-savvy writer might be better applied in a field that is embracing social media.

While I can foresee that PwC might call upon my experience in a limited way, it’s a large firm. So large that even after several months, I still feel like I’m learning what they do. It also feels very decentralized and finding the right person to talk to takes a fair amount of work. I haven’t been there long enough to have a truly informed opinion, but my initial impression is that they’re using cumbersome and limiting technology to publish their web site. As well, they’ve separated my job function from the actual coding of web pages, so that I’m working only in Microsoft Word, writing content that someone else will mark up. So it may be too soon to tell if PwC will be a long-term home for me, or if I just have a perennially roving eye. I’m trying to get some insight into myself, anyway, and tonight was useful.

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Social Media, Unrequited

This is interesting in light of some of the issues we discussed at our panel at SXSW Interactive this past spring. You can listen to the podcast here. I wonder if there’s a way to measure if more people are actually “attending” church online than offline. They certainly seem to be indulging their curiosity at this new site.

Of course, my fear is always that online “community’ is often just an invitation to flame others with views different than your own. The internet makes it much easier to express views you wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing to a stranger IRL, but it also makes it easier to trash someone else’s views without getting to know them first.

Must keep an eye on this GodTube thing…

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GodTube.com Growing Fast

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There Goes The Neighbourhood

During the excavations that took place this past week while Brooke and I moved, I found this ancient relic from the past. My “cyberspace companion” featured some helpful articles. My favourite was “Six Myths: Unmasking Cyber Lore”:

• Myth 1: The Internet is a single network controlled by one organization.
  • Fact: The Internet is actually a patchwork of commercial, educational, government and public and private networks, all cooperating to achieve an open, interconnected communications system.
• Myth 2: The Internet is free
  • Fact: Don’t believe it for a moment. All of the Internet’s conduits, computers, and information resources are paid for by someone. Often an organization provides free Internet access to its members as part of an affiliation. But, for people lacking Internet access through an organization, getting on the Internet carries a price tag.
• Myth 3: The Internet will usher in a new age of democracy, a socio-political nirvana.
  • Fact: People created the Internet, people run the Internet, people drive what happens on the Internet — and people are human. No inherent technological properties of the Internet will bring democracy or a new age of global community.
• Myth 4: Internet users are cyberpunks and content they create is cyberporn.
  • Fact: While some consider portions of the material on the Internet to be immoral, obscene, or useless, much of it is no more controversial than what’s found at a public library or in a bookstore.
• Myth 5: The Internet is chaotic. There’s simply no way to find anything.
  • Fact: While no Internet information-collection or resource-searching tool is flawless, there are landmark collections and tools on the Internet that you can use to find what you want.
• Myth 6: The Internet is hostile to newcomers — the hapless newbies.
  • Fact: While a newbie can get mercilessly flamed for ignoring or flouting the Internet’s social customs, there are plenty of ways a new user can get up to speed in a hurry.

In this pre-Google world, Myth 5 was especially amusing to read. Yahoo still resided at its Stanford URL (http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo). And I love how many times they use the prefix “cyber”! Can you remember your first experiences with the “Internet”?

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Unearthed

The statement “In New York City, someone stole the penis of a chocolate Jesus” is not true; the source was a satire website that was mistakenly thought to be a genuine news source. Harper’s Weekly apologizes for the error.

Harper’s Weekly is an email with a bunch of odd news mixed in with more serious stuff. The fact that it’s usually pretty funny all on its own made this “retraction” even better.

By the way, Harper’s recently revealed an amazing new site with access to PDF scans of their entire 150 years of back issues, free for subscribers. After my complaints about the lack of a DVD archive, this is amazing news. No new, potentially obsolete hardware to buy, just a low rate of US$16.97 per year, and that gets me the printed magazine as well. Genius! Big ups to the brilliant Paul Ford, who’s behind the curtain.

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Best. Correction. Ever.

I have to admit that since then, the underdog WineLog seems to have closed the gap considerably, and maybe even pushed ahead. While Cork’d attracted a lot of the web design/blog crowd who enjoyed the work of designers/programmers Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin, there seem to be fewer, well, wine people there, and I find the site harder to actually use, especially when searching for wines. I still think the biggest challenge involved in making sites like these useful is formatting the information consistently and weeding out redundancies. Which is why I still generally use Cellar Tracker over the upstarts. But it’s fun to keep track of how these projects are developing.

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Wine-ing on the Web

About 200 other people have made panel proposals, too. Which is where you come in. Check out the handy-dandy Panel Picker and nominate the ten best ideas. It’s ok if you don’t think mine is one of them. But if you’re intrigued, and are going to be there (hey, even if you’re not going to be there), do me a favour and throw me a vote. My proposal is under the “Community” and “Miscellaneous” categories, and is entitled “Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online.”

Your input on the panel is welcome as well.

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Pick Me!

But before I post my depressing screed, I will say that I managed to have a pretty good time nonetheless. It’s just too bad that I only get to see some of these amazing people just once a year. For evidence of my merrymaking, check out my photos on Flickr. I’ve posted my photos from 2001 and 2002 on there as well. Ah, nostalgia!

Read on if you dare…

SXSW 2006: Blog Bubble Bursts

I’m not quite sure how to preface my remarks about SXSW this year. I certainly didn’t start out writing something so negative. As always, I had a great time, but there was a vague sense of disappointment in the air this year among my friends. Although blogging has been growing for a few years now, this was the year I felt it fully entered the mainstream. Just as Toyota Prius owners no longer honk at each other, or iPod owners no longer nod at strangers with the same white earbuds, bloggers no longer seem connected just by virtue of being bloggers, and this saddens me.

SXSW 2000 has been described as the bloggers’ “coming out party” and since I started attending in 2001, it’s always felt like a blogger’s conference more than anything else. I loved that at Break Bread with Brad, everyone wore badges with their URL on them. Not what they did, or how much money they made, or even where they lived. I loved the egalitarian spirit of that. Even though a mythical “A-List” soon appeared, along with a backlash, that seemed more like a junior-high expression of cliquishness and jealousy than a serious social disruption. But of course, money changes everything, and SXSW is no different.

It’s strange. Some of the internet nerds I met five years ago are now running technology companies, some are millionaires. And I’m pretty much the same person I was then. It seems like it’s become necessary again to ask someone what they do, or where they work, as if that were more important than who they were.

We’ve stratified to the point where the web designers and the bloggers and the user experience designers and the technologists and the journalists and the venture capitalists don’t even know who each other are. The designers come to discuss design with other designers, the technologists come to present panels and then party with the other technologists. A few years ago, people primarily identified themselves as bloggers, and their jobs came next. I’m not sure if anyone else felt strange that one of the keynotes this year featured two famous bloggers, who were trying to make it their occupation.

All the talk this year was about the new Internet bubble. There was lots of free beer and a closing night party that featured music so loud that no one could talk to each other. There were lots of panels that featured titles like “Does Your Blog Have A Business?” and “How to Blog for Money by Learning from Comics” and “Sink or Swim: The Five Most Important Startup Decisions”. In fact, I haven’t heard the term “monetizing” for many years, but it poppped up again and again this year.

Before the conference, I decided to upload my photos from my first year to Flickr. After I came home, I compared them to my 2006 photos and there is a definite difference. I’m now in the process of uploading photos from other years and I find it amazing that just a few years ago, in the lobby bar of the Omni Hotel, you could find a group of about 30 people who were behind some of the most interesting web sites around. Now many of them are too busy working at their internet companies to attend, or if they do come, are busy with other “business” people or preparing for their panels on monetizing the blogosphere with Ajax or some other Web 2.0 twaddle.

I’m not opposed to advances in technology in themselves. It’s just that I think we’ve lost quite a bit of the spirit that made the original emergence of weblogs so exhilarating. In many ways it was unavoidable, and I’m sure that I sound like a typical crank, longing for the old days. But it hurts me on a personal level when some of the people in my photos from 2001 or 2002 don’t even acknowledge me anymore.

I was joking before the conference that I found many of the web designers in attendance intimidating. They weren’t much of a presence in 2001, and I definitely began attending the conference as what I described as a “scruffy blogger” rather than as an internet professional. The people I still hang around with most would probably fit that description as well, although many are brilliant writers, journalists, web designers or technologists. Back then, though, self-applying the label “blogger” to oneself was enough to gather a similar crowd of early adopters around. I used to proudly claim that I’d found my “tribe,” but this year, for the first time, I felt in danger of losing it.

No doubt, I’ll be back in 2007, but a few of us have begun discussing some of these disturbing changes and what we can do about them. If anything, there will be even more people there next year, and by most measures, this would be considered success: for SXSW, for the internet businesses, even for blogging. And many of the effects I’m describing are the natural outcomes of that success, and are probably unavoidable. But I’m not ready to give up something I love this much, and I’m curious to see if anyone else felt the same way as I did about this year’s conference. David Pescovitz of BoingBoing quoted Timothy Leary at the Bloggies this year, concerning feeling like an outsider: “Find the others.” Others, are you out there?

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SXSW 2006: Blog Bubble Bursts

No disrespect meant to the Belgian fascists, of course.

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Wikipedia = Timesink

If you’re in NYC on November 3rd, check it out and let me know what you thought.

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Critiquing the Rise of “Democratic” Criticism

I know the whole idea of the Wikipedia has been the subject of debate, but here the focus is on the nitty-gritty. Are the articles actually useful? From my own experience, I love the way everything is cross-referenced and linked, but I think I’d be a little more comfortable with some editorial oversight, old snob that I am.

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Can You Trust Wikipedia?

P.S. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few more beloved Texans. Sorry!

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Don’t Mess With Texas

NewsFire is the one you’ve been waiting for. Beautiful, simple, and (I think), free!

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Need An RSS Reader for Mac OS X?

UPDATE: The Globe and Mail has done the same thing, with every issue from 1844 onward. Not available for individual access, but apparently some public and university libraries have paid the site licence fees.

Paper of Record appears to be a sort of super-database consisting of scanned newspapers from Canada, the US, the UK, and Mexico. This could become a great resource.

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Pages of the Past

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GMail?

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RSS Feeds and Copyright

There’s even a list of Toronto-area BBSes from the 1980s, and I remember several of these. The one I was most active on, though, isn’t listed. The Powder Keg was focussed on creative writing, and a bunch of us actually got together a few times for parties and readings, probably around 1990-1991. I’d be interested to know if there was anyone out there who remembers this community? I’d like to add it to the list, but I don’t think I have enough details. I recall a couple of people who were active on the board (Ian Firla, Darren Wershler-Henry), but don’t know who the sysadmin was, the years of operation, or even the dialup number.

Hopefully, this entry will serve as Google bait for anyone interested.

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BeeBeeEsses

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KnowSpam

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Two Short Articles

UPDATE: This is also happening to Brad.

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I Am Not A Spammer

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Chandler

• SportsFilter
• FreeFilter
• BookFilter
• MetaPhilter
• GamesFilter
• MojoFilter

Where’s CoffeeFilterFilter?

(via, where else, MeFi)

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ManyFilters

Kudos to Matt for yet another feat of ingenuity. He’s kind to Canadians, too.

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Ticket Stubs

Note: The “beta code” they ask for is “coke” (no quotes).

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Be My Friendster

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CGI Woes

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Good News for SxSW Attendees

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Amazon Open In Canada!

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Wireless Bandit

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Bandwidth Capping

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CNN Goof

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CNN Goof?

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BBS Documentary

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IS THIS SPAM?

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Strangely Flattering

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“the net” circa 1995

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Slashdot Trivia

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First RSS Experiments

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Style.com

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New Blogger Server

• Your platform (Mac/PC/Unix/Linux/?)
• Your browser
• Your domain (ie. your ISP if you access me from home, or your company or school otherwise)
• Your IP address (if fixed) or IP range (if dynamic)
• Where you live
• If you also have a blog

I’ve been poking around in my stats again, and have tried to determine who my regular visitors are, but this would make it so much easier. Also, you’d finally get to introduce yourselves! (If you don’t know your IP address, try looking in your TCP/IP settings). Thanks!

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Identify!

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Paying For The Web In 2001?

Fascinating read. My favourite quote, “Richard Garriot, the creator of Ultima Online, was once visited by a naked fan who pulled out a gun and took a shot at him.” I want to know from where the fan pulled the gun!

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Shot By A Naked Fan

My first exposure to the Internet was an accident. I frequented a fair number of BBS’s in the late 1980s (and I even had a Compuserve membership for a few years, though I used it sparingly due to the expense), with my trusty 1200bps modem (or maybe I’d upgraded to the doubly fast 2400 by that time). I found an intriguing BBS in Toronto called zooid, which seemed to be a hangout for UNIX types. I knew (and know) nothing about UNIX, but one night stumbled across a command line interface that seemed open to a huge world of information, much larger than typical BBS fare. I started reading about university library collections thousands of miles away. I was giddy, but a bit nervous. Was I supposed to be here? Was this going to cost me money? Fair questions in those days, I think. I didn’t really understand how this worked, and obviously didn’t realize the significance of my discovery until much later. When I headed off to the above mentioned college, in the autumn of 1992, I was about to discover even more.

At this college, as I soon found out, there were rooms in each of the residence halls where groups of terminals glowed around the clock. They had access to something called “e-mail.” Using the pine (or was it elm) mail reader, I soon discovered I could keep in touch with all my friends back in Toronto, at least the two who also had academic email addresses. In an interesting note, my two friends were both graduate students; no undergraduates could use the system at that time. And at my college, everyone could have an email account, but you had to go to the Computer Centre and specifically ask for one, so it was still the domain of the UNIX geeks. Again, I was consumed with worry that this was going to cost money, like long distance charges for the telephone or something.

When I returned to Toronto in the summer of 1993, I knew something had changed. I needed an email account. The offerings were slim. I originally signed up with an outfit called “Info Nation,” which promised a “graphical interface” for the Internet, whatever that meant. But “Info Nation” went belly up within weeks, it seemed. Next, I discovered that a group called “Internex Online” was operating and you could sign up for an account and pay monthly, like your phone bill. At that time, you had to physically go down to their offices and sign up, so off I went. I remembered the place looked like a regular office in a downtown tower block, but it looked like they had just moved in, and the staff looked pretty freaky. It was a few months later I found out that Internex Online actually grew out of that same zooid BBS that I had accessed a few years before. Internex only lasted a few years before hitting some financial problems and being bought out. There’s a fascinating article from 1995 outlining their whole history. It sheds a lot of light on the early days of ISPs, with techies running businesses for the first time. Go and read it.

It seems amazing to me that my entire experience of the Internet spans only 10 years, and that for most people, it’s much shorter than that. I’ve always thought the history of computers was pretty compressed and dizzying, but it’s nothing compared to this. I wonder where we’ll be in another ten years?

(February 2007) BONUS: Here’s a great archived article from March 1994 from Toronto’s eye weekly, by veteran tech writer K.K. Campbell (who seems to have disappeared).

from Consolation Champs

First Internet Experience