The Kingdom Come

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a geek.  Well, I'm sort of a geek.  I began using the Internet when all the Internet was was a loose collection of college BBS's (bulletin board systems).  These were text-based, menu driven formats that looked like the screen shot below.

The commands to navigate from screen to screen were not always the same with each BBS.  And no, there were not any graphics, no pictures beyond "ASCII art" (see example #1, #2).  Joan Stark's work will live on forever!

The connection was spotty and lag time killing.  Many BBS's only operated at a certain time.  But this is the forerunner of the Worldwide Web.  I know we are sometimes told that the Internet was invented by the military, but college and local BBS's were the real parents of what we know today.

Then, as the Internet was born (sorry Al Gore, you ain't the daddy and neither is John Edwards in this case - paternity test pending), other text-based environments began to spawn.  Some of the first were what is called MUDS and MOOS (Multi-User-Dungeon and Multi-Object-Oriented environments).  A MUD was more or less a text-based version of dungeon and dragons, whereas MOOs were social environments more like the "Facebook/MySpace" of that pre-Internet generation.  The largest MOO was a MOO themed as a university campus called LambdaMOO. (I spent many hours there interacting with people from all over the world -- an unique ability at that time, since BBS's were mainly local dial-up).  Each MUD and MOO had different levels of users.  Some users were actually given the ability to code the virtual environment and "objects" where the users interacted. 

Eventually, I even tried my hand at running my own MOO, called PangaeaMOO (pangaea is the theoretical original geographical /tectonical structure of the continents, where all of the continents were connected).  The theme of the MOO was a time in the future when the continents collide and once again became one super-continent.  At it's height, PangaeaMOO had over 400 users from all over the world.  There are a few things about PangaeaMOO I recall the most.  First, the people were almost always kind to each other. The MOO had a great international mix, but even more than that, being a text-based environment it was the ideal place for blind people who use screen reading programs call "synths".  With both a large multilingual and non-sighted population, PangaeaMOO focused on programming the environment to better accommodate these groups.  We put in countless hours of testing modified code to make it more compatible with the screen readers.  For the international community we made the "ULT -- Universal Language Translator".  This would allow users to select their source and receiving language so when other users typed in their source language, the other users would all receive the text translated into their receiving language. This was not just a one-to-one translation.  How it worked, is say an English speaking person could type text and if there were multiple non-English users (Spanish, French, German), each would receive the text in their own language. This was more of a novelty than a functional aspect, since computer-based translation is even to this day, very imprecise due to idiom, slang, irregular grammar and other factors.

Eventually I gave ownership and operation of PangaeaMOO over to another user. PangaeaMOO is no longer in operation as far as I know.

The Internet was just beginning to burgeon. It was mainly message boards at the time.  News outlets and the more seedy side of the web seems to be the first to inhabit the wild west of cyberspace.  I continued to remain mainly in the world of MUDS and MOOS, mostly because at first I was still on dial-up and the connection to the Internet was painfully slow.

When I eventually joined the masses that obtained high-speed connections, I spent my earlier years on the Internet much as if it were a giant library.  Where in the pre-Internet days, my Bible studies involved sprawling on the floor among stacks of concordances, lexicons, commentaries and of course Bible translations -- now all of that and more was at my finger tips.

Like other web-pioneers and early ether world settlers, I would design nifty web pages and learn the latest HTML tricks.

Eventually, I bought the domain name, thekingdomcome.com.  I don't recall the year exactly, but if the wayback machine has it correctly, it was in March of 2004.  I tinkered around some more with HTML but other, better Internet languages were up and coming -- PHP, JAVA and more.

I wanted a very functional, very customizable website that would allow for minimally moderated member usage.  This led me to a CMS -- Content Management System.  This is like a package with preloaded features which can be expanded with add-on modules.  The first CMS I used was called Mambo.  It had some bugs but worked pretty well for what I wanted.  Mambo's "daughter" spin-off is a CMS called Joomla.  I tried it but never liked it.  Eventually I settled on a CMS called Drupal which I use on this and some other websites I run.  I've used Drupal since 2005, mainly because it is easy to setup, easy to expand and its article dating system actually works, unlike as I've seen on some other sites.

Today, many people have a web presence, not via a personal website but through a Facebook account or a MySpace page, or perhaps a Twitter account, a blog or all of these.  A popular new CMS or social network platform is NING. I've worked on a few NING sites, but to me one of the biggest drawbacks is that users MUST be registered to interact/comment.  I have had a standing policy on this site of allowing non-registered users to comment (with moderation). What good is a social outreach if you are only going to allow yourself to hear/read the comments of people you register?

To me, a uniquely owned domain name/website is like having your own home.  Having a free blogspot or wordpress site is nice and very generous of the companies that offer those services -- but it is kind of like apartment dwelling or renting.  The space is never really your own and you can't take out a wall or add a new room as easily as you could your own home.

Now to conclude, remember how I admitted I am a geek?  I'm only sort of a geek, well that's because I would actually prefer to live in the middle of no where.  I didn't own a cell phone until 2009.  I still don't own an mp3 player/Ipod and I hate automobiles so much that I swear when I get old I am going to retire on Mackinac Island where there are only horses, bikes, and feet for transportation (been there 3 times already).  Well, that's my trip down memory lane of Life Before the Internet.  I'd love to hear other people's stories.

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