Mine was as a young man studying the law circa 1995.

The University had free internet on I think Wednesday nights, and I went along once to see what all the commotion was about. The host- Netscape Navigator if I remember right. I remember this photographically- they were Mac monochromes and there were about 3 people per computer.

Everyone at our Uni got a free email as well but no one used it. Then cell phones came in and so did email.

Where were you initiated? 

I remember around 93/94 staying with a young couple in Edinburgh who were friends of my dad. The guy was doing his PHD (or something) in computer science. One afternoon we were having a bit of a jam with the acoustic guitars and I asked him if he knew the chords to Hotel California. 

"No," he said, "but I can soon find out." 

Within less than a minute he was online, and I didn't really have much of an idea of what that meant, but before I knew it he had a list of "results" on the screen, clicked on one, and had the lyrics and the words in front of us. He printed it out. I was totally amazed. I'd heard about the net before but had never really thought of the possibilities. 

I didn't really want to play Hotel California btw. I think I just asked him for something to say. 

I had messed w/ my brother's TRS80 as a kid and had been exposed to computers in school in the 80s but it never clicked. So, all pre-internet. 

When I grew older, I considered them nerd toys.

In the mid 90s, I used to work in a bar which also happened to have a "internet café" section, equipped w/ 2 amazing Pentium 100 and modems. 
 
I remember 2 of the girls in the staff used to stay after hours to go online and chat for hours. My best buddy and I thought they were insane, and that the whole internet thing was absolutely unhealthy, like a drug addiction. We thought the whole world had gone crazy and we were pretty much just like two old men shaking their head in despair at the youth. Except we were 20-something. 

Anyway, we hated computers and we despised the internet. We despised it a bit less when one of the girls showed us a bunch sites dedicated to Hendrix. I think that that's the first time I actually sat in front of a PC. Finding Jimi related information made the internet acceptable.

I remember very well. The internet looked like a WordPerfect document. (yep, wordperfect)

No graphics to speak of, just coloured hyperlinks to click on. There was almost nothing to do except visit universities and look at research papers. There were no web sites as we have today but hypertext was about the only way to go on a 14.4 modem.

Happy days.

I grew up with the internet. First time I remember getting online I was 11/12, dial up and waiting for the connection and pages to load. A few years later I'd sign up for myspace and the whole social media thing happened.

Demon Internet customer since 1992.

I can't remember when I switched from time-shares to billboards to the internet...

Hi,

Probably 1998 or so when I started doing Internet Support here in Vancouver.

But was highly involved in a variety of "newsgroups", specially a couple in international and art film, that were hooked up to the Internet Movie Database. Also active in a couple of other locations on one New Age group (rather pathetic!) and one Paranormal group that included a couple of famous folks around and we did some meditation exercises together and "meet" in some places that were ... insanely fun and succeesful!

My first internet experience involved Gopher, and later Archie. This predates the World Wide Web and Mosaic. It was wonderful! I was an X-Windows coder at the time and before discovering a community of X-Windows coders via the internet I felt like I was the only person on the planet doing it. Surfing was slow in those days; I shared a single 96kbs modem with about 30 other people!

1997. My wife was going back to college and the school issued everyone a laptop. I wound up finding the old hyperthreading HC guitar forum. The "wild west' days of internet forums. Newsgroups were still going strong. I saw things I never imagined and sometimes wish I could un-see... lol. I think that was the beginning of my neck problems. 10 hour sessions of internet surfing.
I also had a VIC-20 and a C-64 back in the 80s... with the C prompt. Played a lot of Frogger and Scorch.

J