This video clip is simply amazing!

In 1994, Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric have no clue what an @ symbol is, and they need a camera-man to explain the complicated inter-workings of the inter-net.

As property management companies start to put status certificates online and eliminate paper versions, and as Realtors do away with fax machines and fully commit to offers via emails, it’s video clips like this one that remind us where it all started…

There are several notorious questions people ask in order to link life with history, such as, “Where were you when JFK was shot?”  Or more recently, “Where were you when you heard about the first plane crashing during 9/11?”

But the question I find myself asking more people my age is, “Who was the first person that told you about the Internet?”

I was at a friend’s house in 1994 when he showed me a new computer game where you beat up Barney the purple dinosaur.  I asked him where he got this game, and he said “on line.”

I said, “Cool.”  Then I trailed off.  A couple minutes later I followed up with, “What line?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

I assumed that this “line” was a store like Radio Shack, but he said he “downloaded” them from a friend’s computer.  I asked which friend, assuming that I knew everybod that he did, and he said, “I dunno her real name – she calls herself VPGirl.”

Now I was confused!  He went to some girl’s house (which was awesome – since I really didn’t talk to any girls…) and he used his 3.5 inch floppy disk to copy a game from her computer, but he didn’t know her real name?

He explained to me that a girl who went to Victoria Park, hence the “VP” moniker, was online with him and she shared a bunch of games.  He taught me that there was a way for two people to connect their computers and talk by typing to eachother, which was great since you didn’t need to tie up a phone line.  It was only later on that I realized the irony here: you needed a phone line in order to get online!  Of course, this led to years and years of busy-signals when you called your friends’ houses, and of course you would always conclude, “Ah – they must be online!”

My friend told me that all I needed to get setup online was a modem.  He recommended the 14.4 KB variety, and said that a lot of offices have them nowadays.

So I promptly went home and asked my Dad if he could bring me home a “modem” the next day.  My mom worked at a public school, which was great for stocking up on pens, paper, and the like, but my Dad was a better source if we needed something like a new printer or perhaps this “modem” thingamajiggy…

I asked my Dad and he quickly said, “No problem,” but he never produced the much-desired new piece of technology that, come to think of it, I had no idea what it looked like.

A few days passed, and I really put the pressure on my Dad to bring me a modem.  My friend was now downloading dozens of games per day, and he had just found a game where you play baseball on ice!

Eventually, I enlisted the help of my mother, who jumped at my father and said, “Just bring your child a damn modem!  Two seconds – just pick one up!  You probably have a storage locker full of them!  Dozens of modems!  Hundreds of modems!”

As if they needed yet another reason to fight, my Dad relented and said, “Alright!  I’ll have a modem for David tomorrow!”

The next day when he came home, my Dad looked defeated.

He revealed that he did not have a modem because, “Not a single person at my office has a goddam clue what a ‘modem’ is.”  My Dad asked me what it looked like, and I told him that I had never actually seen one before.  I didn’t know if it was small, like a disk, or huge, like an entire computer!

My Dad asked me, “Well what is a modem?  What does it do?”

I couldn’t answer that question either.  I just told him, “You can get online.”

My Dad asked, “Where?”

It wasn’t until 1996 that I had my first home computer with Internet connection.  We were fascinated by a program called “Freetel” which allowed you to connect with people from around the continent and chat with them.  Complete strangers!  In South Dakota!  Or Mexico!

My brother started compiling a massive list of all “web – sites” such as http://www.nike.com, which was a “web – site” for the shoe manufacturer.  We didn’t know how many “web – sites” there were, but we were writing them down as fast as we heard about them!  Our list ran to about two-hundred or so before we lost track.  I think there’s more than a few now…

I’m sure if I wanted to, I could track the following fifteen years of my Internet experiences, but you get the picture.

Although I will ask – do you remember how long it took to download a song with an old dial-up modem?  The first song I ever downloaded was “Ghetto Superstar” and it took about 48 minutes.

As for the question, “Who was the first person who told you about the Internet?”  I’m sure it was somebody strange.

My friend in grade nine ended up going nuts and cooking LSD and acid in his basement before deciding he wanted to blow up the school.  I looked him up on Facebook a few months ago and he has a PHD in chemistry.  Go figure.

The early Internet pioneers had to be a bit kooky in order to discover and master such a revolutionary technology.  Thankfully, today we have people at Bell and Rogers who can do everything for us.

I’m not sure where I heard this adage, but it rings quite true: “The Internet is the first thing that man invented, that man did not understand.”

Well, I certainly hope that Katie Couric knows what the @ symbol is by now, and that Bryant Gumbel understands the world wide web…