The Internet Saved Me

The Incredibly Interesting Internet

The internet saved me from a lonely life in a small remote rural town with no library for learning. Well, I take that back, we do have a library, if you can call it that… but what a disappointment! I was use to a big city library.

Then I got connected. What a wonderful thing. It was a small computer given to me and I had it souped up as much as possible so it could navigate the Net. People still gasp when I tell them that it only had 20mb of ram and 320mg of total storage. In this day, or even that day, this was something to gasp about. I had to be careful what programs I installed on it because of lack of space. Most regular run-of-mill programs were huge and took up massive space so I had to find small programs.

I did not have the money to purchase programs, so I had to find free programs. In doing so, I became aware of an Internet community of programers and hackers who were the absolute backbone of the Internet and the nicest people you would ever want to meet.

I wanted to learn to make web pages. I found free tutors and free HTML editors and learned to make simple web pages. My favorite HTML editor is Arachnophilia 4.0. I still use it, even though I also use Dream Weaver. There is an updated version of Arachnophilia 5.2 that is also completely free. It is written in java so it will work on any platform. I have that one also, but I still like the older windows version even though it is not supported. The author does not like Microsoft so he does not write for windows anymore.

For those of you who are just beginning, I have to warn you that you can get overwhelmed with the vast amount of information on the Internet. The Internet is the like world. There seems to be no end to the news, information, business, games, books, software etc. out there.

Don’t be intimidated. Start with one simple thing at a time. Learn to pick up your email first. Then learn to search google. You can find answers to all your questions on the Internet…. well probably. You will find millions of different opinions too.

I started with a book called “The Internet for dummies.” (Don’t knock it. It got me started.) Now, I spend the better part of my day on my computer. Is there a real world somewhere? I think so. But my Internet connection is my library and my window to the world.

I have a feeling the Internet backbone (the hackers) will one day save the world.