Lenawee County History: Information superhighway, before the potholes

In 1993, when I was in my last months in college, we started using a relatively new system. The World Wide Web, or the internet, was something not really known outside high-tech circles. The average person's exposure to the new communication network would not come for another year or so.

The college's system, for want of a better term, was an inter-building network where staff and students could load research papers, photos and sound files. I remember one resourceful person had painstakenly isolated words and phrases from some of recently defeated President George H.W. Bush. We could select each word to form a sentence and get a somewhat realistic sound byte of Bush 41 saying silly things. It was AI Version 1.0, of sorts.

The system was also educational. Information from books, research papers and more were being placed into the network. Those of us who used it believed that it would redefine research, and for me, historical work.

Within a year or so, "Information Superhighway," "World Wide Web," and "Internet" became the buzzwords of the decade.

One global company flooded mailboxes with diskettes, taking the lead in getting America connected to the world. In Lenawee County, the struggle was real, as is said today. There were only a few phone numbers you could dial into in order to get online outside the monthly fee, and 90% of the time it rang busy. For per-minute, long-distance charges, you could use another number to get online, and most of the time you could connect.

In short time, chat rooms appeared, where you could connect with people from all over the world and enter specific boards separated by topic. The days of letterwriting and penpals by traditional mail were fading fast. Everybody was asking for your email address, and, for a time, it was good fun. I made acquaintances and friendships as far away as Australia, some of which continue to this day.

Then, eventually, the chat rooms would be infiltrated by what would be called a "troll" today — someone with nefarious intentions. In the 1990s, we called the person the expletive of your choice, and panned their desire to start a "flame war." The page moderator would ban the user name, which didn't always stop the person. They would simply come back in under a new name and cause a stir.

Back then, it was simply an annoyance, because the person on the other end had no real means to stalk or harrass you unless you gave personal details.

By the late 1990s, my Australian friends, as well as new friends from Canada, England and beyond, came together to draft a tutorial guide on how to build a highly detailed model of the ship Titanic, using a basic plastic kit from the store as a spring board. What would have taken years through letters and phone calls was accomplished in mere months via email. While that tutorial guide from 1999 is hopelessly outdated, it remains online and is a topic of conversation in some Titanic podcasts.

In some ways, I miss the "old days" of the mid-1990s internet, waiting 10 minutes for that friend's family photo to download and excited to get an email in the first place, knowing any troublemaker on the other end was harmless, and the thrill of discovery of new, historical information beyond the books in the local library. You could connect to a library in London and find that otherwise-obscure piece of information.

It was the information superhighway … before the potholes.

Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County History: Information superhighway, before the potholes