Teh Interwebz Series, Part I: Enter the Modem

The year was 1983. There were only two events worthy of mention that year: I was born, and Nintendo released its first entertainment video game console. The proximity of these events was no coincidence. I've grown up around technology. My experience with computers began with the Commodore 64 and its BASIC programming (10 PRINT "YOU SMELL" / 20 GOTO 10). I remember playing games off a 5.25" floppy disk. I remember the joy at seeing graphical user interfaces for the first time. I remember the very long and detailed Chrono Trigger fanfic my brother and I wrote on a word processor in 1995, which is how I learned how to type. But no memory burns so sweet as the frightening screech of the "modulator - demodulator," a strange new device whose otherworldly sounds heralded a paradigm shift in human culture.

I was too young to really get in on the ground floor -- Usenet, IRC, and most bulletin-board systems were too complicated or vulgar. But I do remember America Online chat rooms. Specifically, I remember the fantasy role-playing chat rooms. As though it were a window into my own future, I spent the majority of my early internet days chatting with strangers pretending to be wizards and dragonslayers, creating elaborate personalities and back-stories, interacting with others in a make-believe land. We would play games, share stories, or just talk about our imaginary lives. Sometimes these lives, these expressions of ourselves in the meta-space of the Internet become so detailed and so invested with emotion that they feel like real parts of ourselves. At some point, even though you're telling a story, you feel like you're really telling people about yourself.

I don't know if this is psychologically sound, but I like to think that all of us have three distinct sets of personalities. The first is completely internal -- the things you think of to yourself, regardless of whether or not those things are socially or morally acceptable. This is where your demons and angels dwell, the thoughts and emotions that you have no control over. The second personality is what you choose to show to the outside world, the edited version of the first, including conscious and subconscious decisions about what to say or do at any given time. The third is what other people think of you -- the version of you that exists in the heads of other people. Technically, this third personality is really a multi-personality, since each person who knows you has a different idea of who you are.

The Internet has given our culture a number of things, but one of the most interesting is that it has granted us a fourth personality type: the version of ourselves that exists in the meta-space of computers. Beginning when people started putting up "personal web pages" on GeoCities or Tripod or Angelfire, we have been able to project ourselves into the aether in a unique way, carefully and meticulously assembling a personality for ourselves that exists within the bounds of a browser window or a chat log. Each photo or image or font that we choose is a conscious decision that reflects us in some way, something that we hope will set us apart from the crowd, and that someone else will see and take notice of.

This phenomenon had, until recently, been confined to the world of the computer-literate -- which itself had been confined to social back woods. Having a screen name was a mark of shame, and if you knew how to make a web page you certainly kept that to yourself. But something changed -- I don't remember when it happened, exactly. It might have been Napster that started the trend, but somewhere along the line knowing how to use computers became "cool." The popular kids were getting screen names, girls were asking the nerds for help with their internet, and celebrities were endorsing video games. Suddenly, almost within a year or two, it was hip to be computer-literate.

And, like so many areas of our lives, once the cool kids got involved things really took off.