30 years ago...HAPPY BIRTHDAY WORLD (WIDE WEB).

Since you are here on this site, you might have already opened google. If you haven’t yet, you inevitably will.  And then you’ll see Google is celebrating 30 years of the world wide web!

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Well, that makes me feel old. Do you remember where you were the first time you plugged in to “dial up?” That bee-bo-bop-oh, ch-ch-beep sound. I remember getting those AOL disks in the mail and doing free trials. What is all the fuss about? It’s alien to my preteen-age brain. 

I also remember my parents not loving the idea for us kids. I don’t recall specifics- but now that I am a parent, I can only imagine what they were thinking. We want to protect our children any way we know how. And this was a totally unknown connection to strangers (and expensive…remember?)!

This thing we all are so accustomed to now certainly changed the world. Forever. Made it smaller in some ways for some people and much larger in ways for others. You? How has it affected your world? 

Ironically, I was forced to think about this last night. Joel went to a concert, Hayden was asleep and I had big plans to work in bed (with Bachelor on in the background, since we all knew what was happening anyway)— but our internet wasn’t connecting properly for a bit and messed up the tv, too. Immediately I felt disconnected, frustrated, and annoyed. Like… how can I go all night without the internet? 

It rebooted and all was normal again.

Just 30 short years ago…. before cell phones, social media, kindle, netflix, and even before the world wide web, there was the dewey decimal system. And snail mail. And newspapers. And coffee where we just had words with friends (like actual words, not the game on our phones).  And pagers! Remember pagers? I’ll never forget getting those beeps on my pager driving back to Pepperdine from my audition for THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. I got off the freeway to use a payphone and hear the good news.

I love this “connected” stuff as much as the next person, but to celebrate the 30th birthday, I might go offline. Go crazy like it’s 1989.

At least for a few hours.