It is around 8 to 9 years I’ve been introduced to the internet. It was in the 8th standard of school that I first used the internet. Those were the days when it used to cost some 1Re per minute for usage. I first created an email ID on hotmail, the only famous mail service provider. I still have that mail id and still use it! It is the only mail id which doesn’t have a number in it and has my full name in it! The main purpose of it was to mail my grandpa’s friend who went to the US often.
More than me it was my grandpa who was more excited cos of the switch from snail mail to e-mail! I remember it used to take some 10days for the letter to reach USA and then to get a reply from him another 10days but the whole process took a few minutes on the e-mail. Every evening I remember accompany my grandpa to the internet surfing center to check for mails.
All this excitement grew when I was bought a computer in the 9th standard. Mine was the fastest comp among my friends in school cos everyone in my class who had a comp powered by a Pentium 1 working at some 66 or 100 MHz, with 8 to 16 MB of RAM. Mine was a Celeron 400 MHz! with 64 MB RAM. It could run any game that was present at that time. All this made my friends envy my computer :D. Now it feels funny that a 400MHz processor used for a computer is used in a mobile phone!
A few months later I got a dial-up net connection from SIFY at my home (Sify and VSNL were the only ISPs those times). It too was a first in my friend circle! It used to cost Rs 350 for a 10hr subscription! From then on checking mails was easy, by then many other websites were started like yahoo etc. Some newspapers had also started websites. When relatives used to come home I used to show them what internet could do! All were astonished that it has news, mails, information about anything on earth. I still remember one of my relatives say “Ayyo istond ella idiya idralli!”(Meaning does internet has some much to offer!)
It’s almost a decade old story, I have changed my computer twice from the Celeron to Pentium 4 and then to a dual core laptop and switched from a dial-up to a Broadband connection.
GBs of data have traveled and continue to travel to and fro across networks. Little did I know then, that internet would grow so much from just e-mails to entertainment, infotainment, social networking, blogs, search engines, VoIP, Instant messaging, videoconferencing, e-banking, e-bill payment etc… As a result of which we have reached a stage where we meet friends more often online than face to face.
The Internet has changed the way we think, search for information. Anything in this universe which we know of is available at a click of a button! Internet has become a household phenomenon with accessibility even on the GO and the broadband has revolutionized the way we connect to the internet. I even hear my grandpa and the others of his age asking me to do a Google search of some Veda or some other spiritual stuff.
Going ahead in time I’m sure that the next generation internet has more and more surprises to offer, like it has done in the past!
Internet has become so much so a part of life that sometimes I wonder “how the world would be?” without the information super highway “The INTERNET”
