#dial up internet

[v0id-c0rroded]

Eurostar webpage, 1997

[writeouswriter]

.....what do you mean "dial up the internet?" did you have to call someone to turn it on for you?

I... I honestly can't tell if this is a joke or not. 😭

But I'll take it as serious because apparently everyone else prior to 2015 was having fun on their nice and fast internet here except me, which is fair! So congrats on being one of today's lucky 10000.jpeg.

It does technically involve the telephone, but not exactly in that way. I'm not calling anyone, but the internet itself is, sort of?

Wikipedia describes dial-up Internet as "a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network to establish a connection to an Internet service provider by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line."

Basically dial up is a now outdated form of internet that used a standard phone line and analog modem to access the Internet at data transfer rates of up to 56 Kbps. It was released commercially around 1992 but fell out of popularity in the early to mid 2000s after the introduction of commercial broadband in the late 1990s, except in rural or poorer areas where it tended to persist for a little while longer. (Hello from the rural areas.) Anyway, a dial-up connection is the least expensive way to access the Internet, but is also the slowest connection. (When I was a kid, I tried to watch a three minute video of the "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" song, and it took me at least an hour to load it without buffering. Though text based pages or images would maybe take a few minutes or so, so it wasn't like completely unusable.)

Also, due to how it's set up, you can't use the telephone (home phone) while connected, and if you were to try, it would make what we all know as the classic internet sounds, that you've probably heard even if you didn't know what it was: Pshhhkkkkkkrrrr​kakingkakingkakingtsh​chchchchchchchcch​*ding*ding*ding*. That's terrible phonetics, but I just took that off a search, I wasn't gonna try to type the sound out myself. This, anyway: X.

It honestly baffles me when people don't know what dial-up is, makes me feel old, but I can't hold it against anyone because if you didn't live in a rural area, most people got high speed or some variant thereof really really early on, and most people younger than me and even some older have always had it, so dial-up internet Georg (me), who still couldn't get a single image of a Nicolas Cage meme to load 8 years after the invention of the iPhone is an outlier and should not have been counted, apparently.

On that note, the store where I work at has frequent power outages, which always knocks out the internet to the debit machine, so I'll be like, sorry, we're on dial-up, and some people will smugly be like "oh I bet you don't remember dial-up," and I'll be like, "No, I, I had dial-up like all through high school," and their eyes will go wide, but I think it's mostly because 1. I look like I'm 12, but I'm very much not 12. and 2. Again, people not used to the rural experience, catches 'em off guard.

[kithpendragon]

I've suddenly noticed that I've never heard of an app that performs the same function as a dial-up modem. One that uses the phone app to generate a data stream with the Internet.

A quick search suggests I'm neither missing something obvious, nor the first person to think of this, so why no app? Artificial technical limitations? Actual technical limitations? Obscure contract bullshit?

[the-weirdo-games-two]

WEIRDO GAMES ROUND ONE

[ladyfarona]

And when your parents realized you'd tied up the only phoneline in the house they'd scream "GET OFF THE INTERNET!" Because. You know. You couldn't use the phone and be online at the same time. How did we survive that.

Anyways here's the box screaming noises for those who've never heard it.

remember when you were 10 and you would hang out with your friends in order to Look At The Computer together like you went to their house and experienced the information superhighway together. and then leave

[xtrablak674]

Make Mine Apple

Let's be clear I never had a computer growing up in any of the homes I resided in, whether my mom's apartment, my god-grandma's house or my paternal grandparents home. Computers weren't a thing even considered or even a forethought. But I have been fascinated with computers since I was a child and more widely technology. I wouldn't be as bold to say I was a futurist, but I loved the idea of a future where humans used technology in smart ways. This is a philosophy that I still hold on to today.

Apple Macintosh SE

My first computer was an Macintosh SE, sold by Apple from nineteen eighty-seven to nineteen ninety. I got one used from my friend Ricardo 'Campi' Guzman. I can't recall how much I paid him for this very classic Mac but I never regretted it once. It traveled with me on my four month European tour and was a staple in the publishing of my early nineties zine Fashion Fag Magazine. Based on this that would mean I got it from him sometime around ninety-four when I signed the lease for my first apartment, and I gave it back to him as payment for removing the carpets in my current apartment in ninety-seven. The three best years of my life with my first Apple computer, which for all intensive purposes was a portable computer albeit it nearly weighed twenty pounds. I remember when we traveled on tour I always insisted to the flight attendants that I always board with my computer and my Apple Stylewriter printer that was also in the bag I got from Campi.

Apple Powerbook 5300

Part of the goal of my ninety-six European tour was to save up for a laptop and I had my eye on the 5300 released in nineteen ninety-five. I didn't realize at the time that this was not only the first of Apple's Powerbook series but also the one with the most manufacturing problems that lead Apple to replacing mine with an Apple Powerbook 1400c

Albeit this being a black mark on Apple it was very exciting for me as a customer and a fan to have purchased one Apple laptop and then a few months later get a brand spanking new Apple laptop for at no additional cost.

Apple Powerbook 1400c

This Powerbook was sold from ninety-six to ninety eight and as I said replaced my fifty-three hundred. I still have this laptop today and it still works. I briefly lent it to my grandmother who used it as a word processor for her church projects. At nearly seven pounds it was half the weight of my SE and it found itself a lot of the time traveling around with me in the hard-plastic German children's backpack that I had acquired during my European tour.

If I recall correctly this fourteen hundred was the very laptop I was pretending to work on when my supervisor at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners extended my temp assignment indefinitely having learned that not only did I know how to use Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator but was quite technologically savvy with all of the Microsoft Office applications also. I want to be clear I deliberately did this in an effort to illustrate my value beyond someone who can just set up food for a meeting which is why I initially was recruited.

On this laptop I would produce my last issues of Fashion Fag Magazine and also create The Streetwalker a newsletter for the New York Peer AIDS Coalition the non-for profit that I volunteered at after leaving GMHC over creative differences. It was a golden time for me with the burgeoning of the internet I would soon need to upgrade to something for a more modern time. America Online was cute, but the beginning of the end of dial-up internet was coming.

Apple iMac G3

This all-in-one desktop computer was sold from nineteen ninety-eight to two thousand and three, I acquired the tangy orange one and used this quite powerful and underrated model to launch my design firm specializing in websites, branding and product design. It also was my partner in my fledging fine art photography career being the first of my computers in which I started to archive and edit my photos with the very adult applications like Lightroom.

Before I lent this computer to my late brother and his wife, where it would meet its demise, it was present as I first started exhibiting my work publicly transforming from a graphic artist to a fine artist. This computer was present for my first and last long term relationship and my exploration of high speed internet with DSL and consequently Cable. Those previous laptops had been all about that dial-up life, something I had now left behind me for the faster speeds of Internet 1.0.

Apple Macbook Pro

Introduced two-thousand six I acquired mine in early 2008 a fifteen inch I remember it cost around three thousand dollars this was not just a computer but an investment and one that paid off for me in triplicate.

Wow, this laptop was with me through my return to corporate America now as a freelancer, my various art exhibitions including my New York Times reviewed show, presenting my work nationally, internationally and at museums. It came along with me for my trips to India and Africa, it entertained my nephew during his visits, edited my fledging dabbles in video, and my first short film.

I have Adobe's Creative Suite on here Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Lightroom, Microsoft Office, Excel, Adobe Acrobat and of course Apple's own iMovie, I never did learn Adobe Premier just never having the opportunity. I felt like I could do anything with this computer and I did. I stepped up my pussy game creating the most impressive proposals for my art, letterhead for my fine art career, impressive graphics, promotional materials, and the highest resolution for the birth of my art into the real world.

This would also be my last proper computer. After this baby I wouldn't need as much power and would move my computing to the iPad (3rd Generation) then my first iPad Pro 10.5" and now my iPad Pro 11" which I am writing this missive on with my Apple Magic Keyboard, which has seen better days.

Unlike a nibling of mine who must own stock in Apple and owns, the Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air and AirPods I have always found its best to limit myself to my technology especially if I can find everything in one device I don't need the redundancy. I stopped wearing a watch years ago, I have been adamant I never want a cellphone, as I just said my days of heavy lifting are over so no more need for a laptop and I have never liked things in my ears. Besides my iPad Pro can make phone calls and tell the time, I don't need it tracking my biometrics.

I also think I am from a generation who actually enjoys mono-use appliances. I own a turntable and a set of Yamaha studio speakers for my return to vinyl. I ditched my microwave for an induction cooker, and utilize a humidifier every winter and sometimes a space heater. There are no smart devices in my home, which is why I was annoyed when the landlord recently moved our intercom system to an app, when the analog version worked fine for decades.

As a person who loves technology I still like to be smart with what I use and what I don't use. I am not the person to run out and get something just because its trendy like Fitbits which had their moment like Tomagotchi's in the nineties. You won't find a landfill with a bunch of electronics that come out of my house yearly. It took me nearly twenty years before I gave up my flatbed scanner, and my Canon color printer I sold on eBay after I didn't need such a powerful printer anymore. Oh and I have never owned a television my entire adult life.

Up until the last few years I still was hangin on to that free PC by Compaq I got nearly twenty years ago even though I had discarded the monitor and keyboard a while ago. If there's one thing even as just a asterisk that I would like to be remembered for its my technological savvy and design aesthetic. Personally they were both creative aspects of my personality, and as everyone knows the best brand for creative folks is Apple, and we've been friends since I got out of college.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[duranduratulsa]

The Sound of dial-up Internet

90's Fest Sounds of the 90's: Dial Up Internet #dialupinternet #durandurantulsas4thannual90sfest #90s #90sfest

[michaelworthy25]

[samtheviking]

I identify so hard with all of this... this was/is my life...

the older I get, the more the technological changes I've lived through as a millennial feel bizarre to me. we had computers in my primary school classroom; I first learned to type on a typewriter. I had a cellphone as a teenager, but still needed a physical train timetable. my parents listened to LP records when I was growing up; meanwhile, my childhood cassette tape collection became a CD collection, until I started downloading mp3s on kazaa over our 56k modem internet connection to play in winamp on my desktop computer, and now my laptop doesn't even have a disc tray. I used to save my word documents on floppy discs. I grew up using the rotary phone at my grandparents' house and our wall-connected landline; my mother's first cellphone was so big, we called it The Brick. I once took my desktop computer - monitor, tower and all - on the train to attend a LAN party at a friend's house where we had to connect to the internet with physical cables to play together, and where one friend's massive CRT monitor wouldn't fit on any available table. as kids, we used to make concertina caterpillars in class with the punctured and perforated paper strips that were left over whenever anything was printed on the room's dot matrix printer, which was outdated by the time I was in high school. VHS tapes became DVDs, and you could still rent both at the local video store when I was first married, but those shops all died out within the next six years. my facebook account predates the iphone camera - I used to carry around a separate digital camera and manually upload photos to the computer in order to post them; there are rolls of undeveloped film from my childhood still in envelopes from the chemist's in my childhood photo albums. I have a photo album from my wedding, but no physical albums of my child; by then, we were all posting online, and now that's a decade's worth of pictures I'd have to sort through manually in order to create one. there are video games I tell my son about but can't ever show him because the consoles they used to run on are all obsolete and the games were never remastered for the new ones that don't have the requisite backwards compatibility. I used to have a walkman for car trips as a kid; then I had a discman and a plastic hardshell case of CDs to carry around as a teenager; later, a friend gave my husband and I engraved matching ipods as a wedding present, and we used them both until they stopped working; now they're obsolete. today I texted my mother, who was born in 1950, a tiktok upload of an instructional video for girls from 1956 on how to look after their hair and nails and fold their clothes. my father was born four years after the invention of colour televison; he worked in radio and print journalism, and in the years before his health declined, even though he logically understood that newspapers existed online, he would clip out articles from the physical paper, put them in an envelope and mail them to me overseas if he wanted me to read them. and now I hold the world in a glass-faced rectangle, and I have access to everything and ownership of nothing, and everything I write online can potentially be wiped out at the drop of a hat by the ego of an idiot manchild billionaire. as a child, I wore a watch, but like most of my generation, I stopped when cellphones started telling us the time and they became redundant. now, my son wears a smartwatch so we can call him home from playing in the neighbourhood park, and there's a tanline on his wrist ike the one I haven't had since the age of fifteen. and I wonder: what will 2030 look like?

[sideshow-tornado]

Images you can hear.

[busylazy]

If you've been around long enough to wait for the dial-up modem to connect...

You have mastered patience. 🙏

[adibkhorram]

So I'm checking out your tumblr and I see you have a Photo!! As your icon!! and I just about had a heart attack "is it safe, on this blue hellscape in a post-Cassandra-Claire world, to put your face out there" and then I saw you were an author. Okay. Carry on, friend. Safe internet travels to you.

lol i appreciate you, safe internet travels to you too

[tonydaddingham]

im going outside to scream at the moon, does anyone want anything

[greghatecrimes]

Thirteen.exe has stopped responding

(warning for slight flashing)

[elnerdo19v2]

And afterward we’ll tell them about the horrible sounds it made to actually connect to it @mi-hole-is-pink