Networking Prehistory

The last week I was having a conversation with my father about the technology changes and how they have affected my life, so I tell him the next story:

When I graduated in 1992 from college, I knew it was a uprising communication system among universities, I have seen it in my campus library although I didn't have an outside partner to chat with, so I haven't feel I need to use the application. There were some people that could spend some hours trying to get anyone else on line, it wasn't my case.

Once I graduate, in 1994, it get into my knowledge that there is a network that connects several computers, and that there could be made some communication among them. It was called Internet, and because at that time I worked for a global company, it was relatively easy to get access to this system.

It happens that the people from the generation X, it all started with an email, in  many cases an institutional email, where you can send messages instead of sending faxes, now you have this access to an account and you may use it to communicate in a formal way with other people. Something that immediately get my attention was that this communication was really easy and efficient, so in less than 6 months I have a lot of contacts. I didn't have to meet anyone personally, but I have communication with a lot of people all over the world.

Meanwhile there were a lot of people that didn't worked for a transnational company, so it was difficult for them to get a personal email account, but the market demand was on its way, and at that time, many companies created the account service, one of the most popular was Hotmail.

Once the people have the email service, everything else was about network and contacts. My first group of friends was my college generation. All we needed was to someone created the mailing list with 3 friends and each one integrated some more, in about a week the list has more than 50 people receiving information of the meeting.

It was really pleasant to discover that even though we have not a formal education with the email systems or the Internet, all of us adapted to the use of this new communication tool and we keep contact at that time.

I'm leaving the story here, but before I would like to know: Have you a similar experience with your friends after your college graduation or you are part of the select group of people that get into college with an email account?