#802 Watching something download really fast

Neil Pasricha

You have no idea how excited I was to see this.

The first website I ever visited was Yahoo.com.

The whole sordid affair went down in the mid-90s on a school trip to the Science Center. While other kids from our class learned how paper was made or watched Imax films about the Amazon, my friends and I raced to a dim room at the back stuffed with clunky computer monitors sitting in a big circle. See, we had read ads in the paper about a new exhibit showcasing the Informative Superb-highway and we wanted to experience the straight dope first hand.

Unfortunately for us, geeks from other school districts were keen to surfboard the internetwork as well, because the room was jam-packed with sweaty nerds in long lines waiting for a small half-hour turns to ride the wave.

Learn about the science of the ocean and the art of lifeguarding

Well, we waited and waited and waited and eventually scored a yellow, plastic stool in front of a big screen. Giddy as schoolgirls, we decided to begin expanding our minds and broadening our horizons by researching the hit TV show Baywatch. This was because we had many questions about the show.

Now remember — this was the mid-90s here. Cell phones looked like briefcases, encyclopedias filled home libraries, and young kids with dirty faces stood on street corner soap boxes hocking the evening edition on your way home from work.

old_cellphoneIn these dark times, the only website any of us had heard of was Yahoo, so after spending ten minutes finding and opening Netscape Navigator, we typed in yahoo.com, hit enter, and began waiting for this new dawn of civilization to drop down upon our young and eager heads.

But first …

… there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just a blank screen in a dim room filled with nerves, teen sweat, and yellow, plastic stools. We waited and prayed until eventually heart-pounding teasers dribbled out at the bottom of the screen. “Contacting server,” it pledged robotically first, which sounded promising until it updated itself with only “Connecting to server” a couple minutes later. Then a few minutes later “Transferring data” had finally begun, and big red pixels slowly began dropping into view.

But it was too late.

Our half hour was finishing up.

A red herring

Yes, our big dreams and wild ideas of this magical fantasyland on the other end of the wires dissolved into a page full of text, broken image links, and a complete lack of Baywatch. We walked away that day broken hearted.

Some of us cried.

But now, up here in 2009, when I look back on that long bus ride home, I smile because it reminds me of how far we’ve come. Websites load in the blink of an eye, mp3s zip home in a few seconds, and giant video clips of skateboarding accidents download to our monitors in no time flat.

Watching something download really fast sure does get your juices flowing, doesn’t it? As those little bar-graphs fill up, you just rub your palms together and cackle like a madman. I mean, things are just so good now. It’s gotten to the point where David Hasselhoff can appear shirtless on your screen without you even noticing he’s coming.

AWESOME!

david-hasselhoff1

Photos from: here, here, here, and here

14 thoughts to “#802 Watching something download really fast”

  1. Remember when we had dial up? You would have to go and make a coffee to fill in the time while waiting for the internet to start! Ah, fast internet is awesome!!!

  2. That final line made me giggle. :P

    But indeed, technology is an amazing thing. Imagine travelling back in time to 1913 and showing people how a little thing in your pocket can access the world.

    2. My grandmother was born in the 1880s. She had her first child pre-1913 (My mom was her last child, born when she was 46)! She would be very confused by today’s world as everything has changed greatly. I remember being a little girl watching TV with grandma when Tiny Tim came on The Ed Sullivan Show. My grandmother insisted he was a she and I kept trying to tell her he was really a he with long hair…she’d have none of it. My grandmother & my grandfather never even owned a car. I’m certain that’s why it would not be good to live forever…the world changes so greatly that our human minds simply could not adapt.

    1. Same here!! But then I think we can appreciate more awesomes, such as sights of the first blooms in spring and listening to the baby birds sing!

  6. I like how you said “But now, up here in 2009” … Yeah I know this is round number two, but it was like a blast from the past while kind of talking about the past!! HAA!
    I still use dial up at work for one thing. Its supposed to be a ‘secure line’ if I use it.

  7. I grew up with the Internet, since I was born in the ’90s, so I can’t fully appreciate how far we’ve come, since I don’t have that much experience with a world without computers. Cell-phones have gone really far, though. I can remember a time when phones didn’t have touch-screens, so I guess I have some experience with technological advancements. It’s actually really cool when you look at just how much things have changed in only the last 30 years. Things are starting to move forward crazy fast.

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