Robert (gurdonark) wrote,
Robert
gurdonark

old times, modem sound

I think lately about things that change in internet life. Like most folks who are above a given, fairly low age, I began my time on the internet on a low-baud telephone modem. This never seemed too slow, because all the interfaces were optimized for low power usage. Video downloads were impossible. Song downloads were difficult but barely doable. General MIDI music, usually monophonic, ruled the waves.

Website maintainers raged about "hot links" to photos "stealing bandwidth" from the sites, as bandwidth was impossibly expensive. Then, more than now, any minor tweak in the graphical user interface for any website drew howls of rage from those who believed that What We had was Perfect. I think now that most of us have switched GUIs so often that we're a bit more copasetic with such things.

I remember spending a lot of time in Compuserve chat rooms, and after that in AOL chat rooms. The latter were pretty chaotic and unmoderated. On-line video was nearly unimaginable, until we got high-speed internet and it became commonplace. I liked the way that high-speed internet made on-line audio more available, though doing dial-up days text and simple graphics seemed pretty vivid.

I discovered LiveJournal in 2002. I suppose I first got any form of on-line service around 1992 or 1993. The phone modem and the telephone shared a line. I was a moderator on a section of a Compuserve forum for a while. I remember going to an in-person meetup of the folks on the forum.

I listened to music I made in 2007 and 2009 today. I think I'll start releasing some music on bandcamp. I like to release on other folks' netlabels, but I remember when the DisFish label meant I could release at will. Bandcamp would be an alternative to give me that flexibility.
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