Silicon Valley has the reputation of being the birthplace of our hyper-connected Internet age, the hub of companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook. However, a pioneering company here in central Ohio is responsible for developing and popularizing many of the technologies we take for granted today.
A listener submitted a question to WOSU’s Curious Cbus series wanting to know more about the legacy of CompuServe and what it meant to go online before the Internet.
That legacy was recently commemorated by the Ohio History Connection when they installed a historical marker in Upper Arlington — near the corner of Arlington Center and Henderson roads — where the company located its computer center and corporate building in 1973.
The plaque explains that CompuServe was “the first major online information service provider,” and that its subscribers were among the first to have access to email, online newspapers and magazines and the ability to share and download files.
Yeah. Part of that is the same kind of nostalgic for me, but also I guess I miss the feeling of the internet being somewhere you go, deliberately, rather than always-on, always-connected, pinging me with attention-sucking notifications constantly.
Like when you sign into AOL messenger in the dial-up days. That was an indication you wanted to chat and had set aside time for it; it was like flipping the sign from “closed” to “open”. Now, you’re just always expected to respond.
Yeah man, you’re speaking my language. Back when seeing someone as “online” generally meant they were deliberately there, not just that their phone was on