com-mu-ni-ca-tion (kuh-myoo-ni-key-shuhn)

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.” -C. JoyBell C.


When I sat down to talk to Jessica about the assignment we had about our childhood experiences with the internet we found out that our experiences were very alike. We both couldn't remember our exact age but we remember using AIM and AOL and playing the awful internet games with the awful dial up connection. We both also talked about how far the internet has come dealing with video chatting and Facebook taking over our lives.

Before we actually sat down to talk and after being paired together we both had realized that we had a previous class together a semester ago but never really had a chance to talk and get to know each other due to just being in class and doing class work. The main topic of our discussion was school and what classes we had left to graduate and when we were graduating. We also discussed how other classes did "get to know your classmates" scenarios. We were very laid back in talking with each other and laughed a lot due to knowing each other previous and just having really good communication with each other and getting our points across for the discussion.

What We Have Learned To Know and Love

“No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.” -James Arthur Baldwin

The quote that I have found above sums up the first time I have ever used the internet. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the young age of 12 when I had to beg my parents to let me get an email account. I remember sitting with my father at our family's old dial up PC trying to come up with an appropriate email address for a little girl and what parental settings needed to be locked in, Lkprtlaw was the out come, (abbreviation for Lockport. LAW=initials) which is still in use today. I was so excited to finally be trusted enough to go on the internet and play games on the Nickolodeon website and use instant messenger with my friends from school, look up things online, and play around with pictures, etc. It was honestly a mind blowing experience that could only happen that one time for the first time and sharing that experience with my father makes it even better. At that very moment we had no idea what we were in for or what exactly the future was going to hold for our future and the internet.

Flash forward many, many years and I am still in awe about how far we have come with the internet and all the fun and exciting things we have the privilege of doing. The internet alone runs a million times faster than what it used to and the many ends of the internet are unknown, everything and anything you have ever wanted to know is on the internet.  Email, file transfer, newsgroups, and online games are only a few things that have progressed over the years. We can stream all kinds of media, set up podcasts, and webcasts, chat rooms, media conferencing, there are WIFI cafes so people can be out of their houses and access the internet. Almost every phone that is bought today has a internet package on it. I looked up on the internet that "Overall Internet usage has seen tremendous growth. From 2000 to 2009, the number of Internet users globally rose from 394 million to 1.858 billion. By 2010, 22 percent of the world's population had access to computers with 1 billion Google searches every day, 300 million Internet users reading blogs, and 2 billion videos viewed daily on YouTube," we are so dependent on this technology for our everyday living.

If you asked me what I thought my relationship with the internet would be 11 years later I probably would of told you "not much." When I was 12 and first started using the internet, it was just to play around and not do anything important. It’s amazing how much school work and life work I do online. Now, I don’t know where I would be without the Internet.