15 Years?

Time flies when you're having fun. It's been 15 years since the Internet hit it bigtime. In that time, I've had the opportunity to become a billionaire several times over, get hundreds of requests to partake in deals from Nigeria that will add to your net worth, get pornography for free without ever having to go buy a Playboy ever again, never have to worry about my manhood because of the wonders of modern medicine, and never have to engage in the dating scene without first consulting an online dating service.

It all started with a graphic interface for the networks that we used back in college. They called it Mosaic. And it was glorious. I was doing research on Middle East politics and it made it so much easier to obtain source information than going through Gopher. You remember Gopher don't you? And I don't mean Ted Grandy from the Love Boat either.

I mean the original way to sort through the various networks connected to each other on college campuses. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of the original dating services - the relays. If you know what I'm talking about, you know what I mean. Too many people I know used the relays as one huge chat room/dating service - and it worked.

So, from those origins, we now have e-harmony.com, jdate.com, match.com, and hundreds of other services that did the same things as the relays, but you now have to plunk down your credit card to use them.

And CNN has it all wrong. The most significant step in the development in the Internet is the fact that people realized that the could do more than talk to each other - they could use it for commerce. So, I'd say that the development of Ebay and Amazon.com was the key development. Of course, that coincides with the moment in time when the Internet went from being cutting edge to being passe, but that's besides the point.

There was money to be made. Stock options to get. Venture capitalists to fleece. And Nigerians looking for easy money. Oh, those Nigerians. They took grifting and scamming to new levels. I have personally been contacted by the sons and relatives of dictators from various African nations too many times to count. Hundreds of emails. Billions in money transfers just waiting for my personal contact information to seal the deal and transfer my cut on each deal. Which, in a way, was like the stock options offered by thousands of Internet startup companies - the dot coms.

And in a flash, the stock options were torched in the market correction that saw so many dot coms go belly up. Heck, the sock puppet from Pets.com ended up working for a credit counselling service or other such nonsense. He was had for pennies on the dollar - and began making money for someone else. Go figure.

Now, we don't think twice about email, videoconferencing, VoIP, blackberries, or any other accoutrements of what the Internet has wrought. In fact, you wouldn't be here reading this if the Internet wasn't around. I'd probably be watching TV or a movie right now. And wondering who the heck the guy on the screen is and not knowing the joys of IMDB.com to search for movie trivia. Which reminds me.

Football's on [crummy game such as it is - is still better than anything else on tonite].

I guess I better go check my fantasy football stats online.

Hey, never said I'd give up my usage that easily.