How far has the Internet come for me?

Let us go back fifteen years on a Saturday evening. My father had just bought a US Robotics 33.6k dialup modem and a subscription to Pacific Internet’s 50 megabyte a month plan. As he installed  the modem, I was in a world of my own. For months, I had been reading in the Computers Times about this new magical thing called the Internet, of the unlimited possibilities that it held. Now, in front me, was the opportunity  to see exactly what was all this hubaloo all about. When the modem had finally connected to PacNet’s server, I saw the screen slowly loading with static images and text, all leading to various sub-pages, all offering different information. All one could do with it was just to surf and find things.

Now let us fast forward to the year 2009, here I am sitting in a MacDonalds’, typing out this post on a laptop, connected to the Internet via Wireless@SG. Since the first time I used the Internet, how I use it has changed so tremendously. Initially, it was just a passive relationship with it, just using it to look at things. As the years went by and people started coming up with new uses, things began to change to a move active relationship.

For example, in the past week, I have used the Internet to conclude a trade with a person in the United States over a scale modeling forum, within a day of first contact. Back then, there was no channel for such a thing to happen. But now, with the concept of online forums, interaction with other people of similar interest is now so much more easier. One can find like minded people from all around the world so easily now, making the Internet into a social tool as well.

Maintaining contact with people has also been made much easier. With programs like MSN Messenger and Skype, one need not rely on snail mail or the telephone to keep in contact with another person, be it using text or voice.

Another thing that I think has come very far is the sharing of media. Because of the limitations of bandwidth, the best anyone could have sent out over the Internet was just simple text. With the advent of broadband internet, one can now just download a video file in a matter of minutes, depending on it’s size.