Who is this guy?
The above is a fair question if you are new to this space.
Who is this guy and why should I read what he shares here?
Getting right down to it, I am one of many folks who inhabit the blogosphere with postings on various subjects from time to time. My online presence goes back to the earliest days of computers and communications. The first exposure to the wide world came at the UC Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science, with some lunar lander simulations and other amusements on a teletype terminal. Later on, junior college exposed me to timeshare computing and the world of BASIC language programming. Unlike my peers, I never graduated to FORTRAN and punched cards; whose bedeviling ways I did not partake of.
My first exposure to the world of personal computing came shortly after that with the Radio Shack TRS-80. I entered the Apple universe through an odd gateway. A friend had ventured into the Apple ][ sphere and piqued my interest. Through a co-worker, the purchase of an Apple ][c got me addicted, and dialing into a local bulletin board service; a.k.a. a BBS at the blazing speed of 300 baud. Heady days indeed…
During a visit to Southern California, there was a party where the host was doing double duty. As well as entertaining us in person, she was moderating/hosting an online chatroom in the earliest days of America Online. Called The Best Little Chathouse, it was a fascinating look into sharing an evening of merriment from the confines of one’s location with others who had access to the word via dial-up networking.
Not long after, I too joined AOL. In those days it was an all Apple universe. Using an Apple ][ or the earliest of the Macintosh line, you could find all kinds of folks who shared your interest. Everything from a favorite television show to theme parks and more were waiting to be discussed, dissected, and shared with fellow enthusiasts. Eventually, the PC invaded, along with millions of kids. It was like the Wild West all over again. This time, AOL was mining usage by the hour, and with parental credit cards charged, it was a big bonanza as the little joys spent untold days and nights online. Running wild along with adults looking for everything from bootleg recordings of favorite bands to online romantic (and kinky) rendezvous.
But it did not stop there by any means. Once the Internet opened the floodgates, there was access to USENET groups and more. Keeping informed on the latest and greatest was a breeze with plenty of new friends. AOL had plenty of competition with GEnie, Compuserve, even Apple’s own brief foray with iWorld, and more.
I stepped up my own game by joining AOL’s Remote Staff as a Community Manager for the Entertainment group. It was the Television Viewers Community and it ran the full gamut from sitcoms to one-hour dramas to animated shows to soap operas. Dedicated fans expressed their opinions on everything from favorite characters and episodes to the off-screen lives/antics of their favorite actors. My own interest in shows started me as a casual chat host for fans of NBC’s “Quantum Leap” during the series’ first-run. Eventually, the community expanded with shows such as the various Star Trek incarnations and the X-Files (or X-philes, as fans began to call themselves).
The writing was on the wall, however, as Internet browsers allowed fans to create their own web pages and share them with anyone from the privacy of behind the veil of anonymity. AOL and others gave up their online communities and became little more than placeholders. (Oddly, AOL survives still to this day as the nation’s largest internet service provider of dial-up communication for areas still lacking broadband access.)
So, that’s part one of the bigger tale. Tune in next time to find out what led me into the bigger picture, with my own domain name and the world of free shrimp!
