The internet

I think my family, and me have had computers since I can't even remember... 1992? We had an old IBM we got from someone who was upgrading their office computers, it had windows 3.11 on it, and was horribly interface wise. Then we got our first computer with win95 (or was there ever a win93? I'm deliberately not googling that). It was awesome, so much easier to use, and it was attached to a modem -and we had THE INTERNEEETS. I have no idea how it happened, but somehow I managed to get both ICQ and mIRC -can't remember what came first. My first friend on ICQ was canadian melissa, which I have no idea what is doing right now. on mIRC I found several from my own area, and sadly I must admit that is where I met my first boyfriend -haha.

Somehow I managed to end up getting to know people from Narvik in the chats, and I had this bunch of friends from Narvik and the Oslo area that I met in Oslo the summer of '99. Tonje (from Spydeberg) is still one of my fairly good friends (we don't keep in touch too often, but then again she lives abroad). I also met Sigve who has a fairly well known blog in norwegian politics or something... (hey, I hate politics). Turned out that I went to this LAN party that Narvik was holding, and I met my second boyfriend (hahaha) Torje. To be honest I have to admit he was the love of my life for several years, the first man I ever loved, and the one man it took me ages to get over. I finally knew I was over him when I realized how big his front teeth was (no offence hon, they just was compared to others). Now he is happily engaged to his girlfriend for years, almost ever since we broke up in fact -his old best friend that I already knew would be the right one for him -good for them!:)

Anyway, Narvik and mIRC found me a lot of friends, and we moved in to the era of msn. Ever since MSN, even though ICQ was mostly "friends only", I feel like the internet has become more and more "friends only". On mIRC you would always find someone you didn't know (up to a certain time of hanging on there), and meeting new friends online wasn't too hard. Then again, it was mostly geeks that were online back in those days, and not "everyone". Haha, I'm turning in to one of those old ladies who thinks everyone was so much better in the past (lol of self).

Through the internet I met new friends, whenever I moved I met new people where I moved through the chat, mainly IRC, since as mentioned, MSN isn't really a place where you pick up random people. Then myspace came along, and probably things before that which I never knew about. I never really found myspace to be the big hit. When I was studying pharmacy this new thing called facebook came along, and somehow me and my bestfriend Kristian, even though we thought FB was silly, we decided to see who could catch the most friends/old people we knew and we made a FB account each. Turned out he knew more people than me, no shocker there. Facebook is still a closed medium, but with all the shares that goes around there, it really isn't a very safe place to put your kids picture or a lot of personal information..

Now to my half-point. Even though we have all these closed communities online (in the old days I got to know people through planetarion and it's community), we still don't get too far away from new people. All over the place people are making these things called blogs, and everywhere people are reading about eachothers lives, and getting to "know" eachother through their blogs. The important thing to remember is that we DON'T know these people. We think we might, but we don't. However, I do admire the ones that put their whole lives, and whole self-worth out there for us to inspect - you guys are amazing. If you haven't seen these people already, let me recomment Lise, Marie, Talented Gudrun, Ida, Kayso, my old friend Trine, Hedda (cute 17 year old currently exchanging in the US), and all those others out there. Sofsen is pretty awesome too, although hasn't blogged to much lately, but maybe after new years resolutions she will?

All I can say is, that so far I only know one of these fab girls in person, and I hope that 2011 let's me meet atleast one, or maybe two of them!:) You girls are awesome, I admire you, and you deserve some attention. Diem Perdidi is one of my newest attachments to my bloglist. And last but not least, check out my awesome journalist friend Julie, ooh, and her dad Espen too :)

The internet, according to this person

In retrospect, this is how the internet has changed... we are "fans" of eachothers work (well, not too many fans on my part, as hardly anyone "knows" I'm here -not that it matters). It's weird for me not to "Talk" to people through some sort of chat though, because that's always how I've used the internet to get to know people before I actually met them in person.
Have a good weekend guys, I will spend it cuddling with my new HTC Desire :)
xoxo
M