Korean Job Discussion Forums

[chronicpride]

I saw this at a bookstore in Daegu on the weekend and decided to buy it for reading on the train back to Seoul.

10 years since the web turned the corner from being a geek thing to commercialization and wide acceptance. It made me think of how I adopted the net into my life and thought that I'd share my experiences with others on here, and hear some of your stories of adoption.

I didn't fully adopt until 1999-2000, but dabbled a bit before then. When I first tried the internet, I think it was in 1995-1996 or so. I was at a friend��s house, who had a good computer and he showed me the internet. Using Netscape, I first saw and used Yahoo and Altavista. I thought it was really confusing, at first. The way it was first explained to me, I thought there were 2 internets. 1) the World Wide Web and 2) The internet superhighway. I thought that we always had to type http before every URL in the address bar, and thought that only computer geeks will enjoy the internet and everyone else, will just play games and stuff. I didn��t bother to get my first email address until 1999. I was working at a firm, at that time, where I had a terminal without internet. So, I'd sneak onto a shared computer, pretending that I was doing stock research for my boss, but kept other browsers open with movie sites like aintitcool.com. Alt-tab came to me quicker than any other skills.

Since then, I��ve had over 10-12 email addresses, 2 blogs, helped build, stress-test, and market a banking website in Canada, and most recently built 2 online businesses of my own, and now building a 3rd through the help of various designers and programmers that I communicate with at the same time, who live in places like St.Petersburg, Bombay, and Wyoming. 8 years ago, that would've sounded so surreal. But now, it's just ordinary for anyone who has a computer. And in another 10 years, we'll be snickering at the growth that we think we've had, up until now. Nevertheless, I��m quite surprised at how quickly it has shaped my life.

Anyone have stories of their internet adoption?

[The evil penguin]

Did you know that you can see rude things on the internet? I found that out back in my uni days and was barred from the computer labs for a week.....

[Hollywoodaction]

I've been using the net for about 15 years (Do you remember Gopher, Telnet, and Usenet?). I was using BBSs long before that. I remember spending an hour waiting for a 30 second movie trailer to download when the World Wide Web first came along, and then not being able to see much because the quality was so poor.

[joe_doufu]

I started college in 1995 and was SO lucky that I did. Back then Netscape 1 was out and my friends and I taught ourselves to make websites step by step, literally as new features were added to the browser... tables, then frames, then animated GIFs, then Java applets. Man I wish I had kept a backup of my first website, I can barely remember it. For two years I was the only person from Rangeley, Maine to have a website, so my father, a middle school principal, used it in all his demonstrations of the Internet at school. I never realized I had an audience of strangers until he asked me to be aware of my bad language and innuendo!

I majored in Communication (aka sitting next to sorority babes) but my real education was in the web, and I went to work in that business for NBC and Disney. Finally I realized I liked technology but not enough to want to spend my days in a back room somewhere, so I went to Asia. However, I've built websites for almost every company i've been working for since then, and it's an essential part of my life. It would be hard to imagine life without it.

[mindmetoo]

I've been randomly chronicling my dot.com experience here:

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=31655