CompuServe and the Nostalgia Trap

 

I've been watching a few videos on YouTube from Techdistrict, a channel that specializes in little documentaries on the rise and fall of early tech giants. Examples include AOL, Sun Microsystems, Gateway, CompuServe, etc.

They are very interesting if annoyingly "narrated" by AI journeys. It's so amazing that companies that were once so large and towering, both in market cap and social/cultural significance, can somehow wither away into nothing. It's often a study in hubris and not being able to recognize which way the winds were blowing.

However, it also reinforced something that I've noticed as a biproduct of Adrianna's loss: Nostalgic dalliances are much more painful for me now.

It was cool to see images of CompuServe's simple startup page that would greet you after waiting for a successful modem handshake and connection, a little discordant song that would fill me with anticipation of what was to come, what was to be discovered. Who was to be discovered.

The GUI was rendered in 8-bit 256-color image files that formed little buttons, each tantalizingly beckoning you to check out the new worlds just a click away: news, sports, travel, games, and the internet, curated experiences each represented with simple art and basic colors.

Much of it was a walled-off area that wasn't even truly "the internet" at all. That, after all, was its own separate gateway, its own separate area that might has well have been the Wild West.

There was email, too, though at that point you could only email other CompuServe users, whose usernames were composed of a five-digit number followed by a comma and then four other digits.

"I am not a number, I am a human being!" indeed, but that was what we had. I can't remember mine or find any reference to it, but I do know it started with a 7...

You'd pay by the hour which was metered by the minute, but we were glad to have it. Seeing these images again and remembering that time in my life hit me hard. So much was ahead, and anything was possible. I knew that soon I'd be able to talk to my daughter and others no matter where they were in the world, and I couldn't wait for that opportunity.

The tech was moving so fast, and I was along for the ride loving every minute of it.

Soon the pay model changed to unlimited time for a set amount per month, and that was that. Then AIM and other instant messengers. And newsgroups. And webspace like GeoCities. The always on internet via DSL, cable modems, T1 lines and finally fiber optic.

But at the start for me, in the early to mid-90s, there was CompuServe. And there was Adri.

Part of me irrationally wants to go back to that era, to a pseudo-"simpler time," where just the notion of getting real-time news updates and being able to view the artwork at the Louvre from my apartment desk at 3am in the morning was just so wonderful. Where I could make contact with friends from childhood that I hadn't spoken to in decades.

Where Adri was alive and thriving. Where Adri had decades still ahead of her. Where technology promised to bring us all together.

Where little things were taken for granted but eventually slipped away forever.

Where time was static.

I'd give almost anything to be there again, to live it all over again with her.