When did you first start using the internet? How has it changed your life?

JimmyPage

I ask this because an article on MSN said that the internet is now 20 years old.

I don't really remember it being used much until around 1995.

I didn't have the internet until around 2001.

I had some great experiences with the opposite sex in large part because of the internet.

Obviously it changed my life when I started lurking here.

And social network has helped me get back in touch with relatives, schoolmates, former JWs, and people I used to work with.

All in all, I love it!

So when did you start using it, and how has it changed your life?

Black Sheep

About 1986. It wasn't the internet as we know it today.

It kept me out of the library.

I don't really have any idea what difference not having it would have made. I evolved with it. It's just there.

It was late 1996 or early 1997. I went back to school at 31, and all of the traditional students were on the internet. I didn't trust it, because I thought nothing was copyrighted. Then I had an assignment where an internet source was required. The rest is history. I use the internet for research on everything from the best sale price on anything we need to buy to symptoms of illness to phone numbers. Plus I found silentlambs, YouTube and beloved JWN.

Hortensia

1993, I think. I remember my first web page, a very amateurish affair. My first email account. I remember when earthlink.net was righteous, yeah!

I snagged a couple of web addresses early on, kept them for quite a long time. Sold one for a good price last year.

I love the internet.

I love computers.

Smart phones - you can keep them, though. Not interested.

St George of England

I remember in 1980 I was on a course at Stirling University and we had computer terminals connected via a modem (you had to physically dial up and place the handset on the modem!) to Newcastle University where the mainframe computer was based. That was my first exposure to remote computing.

Then came 'Bulletin Boards' about 1987

The biggest change came in early 2009 when I found this site.

George

discreetslave

1996 then a hiatus from 98-2002 Bethel & no computer years.

Until recently the major impact on my life was banking. Now I owe my freedom to it. I was having doubts due to examining the doctrine for myself. Going on the 'net and finding others to validate my research as well as all the other dirty secrets I learned. PRICELESS

zoiks

I guess around 1993 or so in high school. I also remember at an after school job around that time that the head IT guy would constantly dial BBS systems and download porn. Ah, porn...driver of online innovation.

Got access to Compuserve full time around 1995. Found my first apostate site around that time - I was shocked, and typed a nasty message to the person while sweating and shaking.

These days most of my internet access is on my phone. It helped me to access JWN privately at a very crucial time in my life...so I would say that I owe a lot to the internet and to my BlackBerry.

transhuman68

LOL. I only started using the internet a couple of years ago. My family was working-class, and kinda anti-intellectual, so I always assumed there were no answers to all the big questions. Finally I decided I had to find out what was real and what was not. The internet has changed my life, because finally I can say, like Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter “This is this…this ain’t something else… this… is this’. It’s really cool to have so much information instantly accessible.

aligot ripounsous

As far as getting to know the reality of the WTS, the internet (since about 2004) really changed everything, since it helped me formalise and give foundation to opinions which until then had lacked factual evidences. It was quite easy, I really admire those who broke free before the internet era.

WTWizard

I first got online in mid 2006. I found out that the witlesses had major doctrinal problems, and that the Internet wasn't so horrible as the Filthful and Disgraceful Slavebugger warned me of while I was a witless. It also made it much easier for me to order items--from sun-worship decorations, new clothing and bedding/towels, small appliances and utensils, batteries, chargers, and lanterns--to silver. All without those cockroaches knowing what I had, so they couldn't order me to "sac-ri-fice" it.