Only 10 years ago, telling someone your email address was a very painful process. I shared my email address quite a bit as I didn’t have a cell phone until turning 18. I very much remember the painful process of of sharing my email address with those my age and older.
- “Just email me.”
- “Okay. I’m on AOL. Are you on AOL?”
- “No. I’m on Hotmail.”
- “I don’t think I can message you on Hotmail unless you have an AOL screenname.”
- “It’ll work, you’ll just have to put an at sign in there.”
- “Alright. Let me grab a pen and paper. Ready.”
- “It’s PCPimp1702@hotmail.com”
- “Alright. PCPIMP17O2athotmail.com”
- “No, don’t use all caps and the O is actually a zero and the at is an at sign.”
- “A what?”
- “An at sign. It’s on your keyboard. It’s an “a” with a circle around it.”
- “Alright. I’ll try to find it. Why don’t you just have AOL? I have some CDs laying around that you can get the 1st month free.”
- “Hotmail is free as well. Let me just write it down for you.”
- “Okay. I have to pay for my Internet by the minute and I’m a slow typer so can I just call you at home?”
- “Fine.”
Yes, that was my old email address back in the day. Don’t ask.
It really was that bad. I remember so vividly that no one knew what an @ sign was. On AOL, you didn’t need the @ + Domain Name because you’d just type in their AOL screen name. Remember AOL Keywords? Iti makes me realize just how far we’ve come.
Also, am I the only person that realizes that the Internet and cloud computing is sort of old school? Remember “terminals”. That’s what our computers are becoming. Boot up terminal to a web browser, go to server you want to interact with, then sign off. It really reminds me of the 60s when you’d just connect to a terminal.