Online Since 1996

I first got online in 1996 because I had read an article somewhere about the emergence of online discussion boards and I thought I would like that. People from all sorts of walks of life, many countries, many ethnicities all communicating with each other. Sounded like an experience I would enjoy.

So as soon as I got online on my cheap old Windows 95 desktop I went looking for it.

The first I found was at the Utne cafe. The Utne Reader then was a print magazine that collated some of the best writing from progressive thinkers from all over the world though mostly from the US and some from Canada. The Utne Reader now is much the same but is fully digital. It's here. Back then it had a digital presence but was still primarily a print magazine. The Utne Cafe was a digital discussion board that anyone at all could join if they had a computer and a link to the web. It still exists, in a somewhat different form than it once did, and it still uses the same conferencing platform known as Motet, to my surprise. It's here.

There were people there from all over the planet but since it was an American magazine and the Web was an American invention and the people of the US bought the most computers and so on the vast majority of them were from the US.

I learned how to type on The Cafe. I still don't touch type, I'm a hunter-pecker, but The Cafe was where I learned to type well enough to express a cogent thought from time to time. I learned how to argue online and to my shame I learned how to be meanly sarcastic, snide and abusive. Because I wasn't Dana Still. I was known as Banquo's Ghost and for the next decade or so that was my online handle, my nom de plume, my nom de guerre and the name on the email address I used for everyone except my family and friends.

I was Banquo's Ghost in Utne Cafe, in Howard Rheingold's web community Brainstorms and in Kevin Drum's early political blog called Political Animal at The  Washington Monthly. That covers 1996 to about 2006.

All American based. Populated by a wider spectrum of nationalities than only Americans to be sure but still dominated by Americans, American thought structure, American preoccupations, American jurisprudence, governmental infrastructure and processes. The rare occasions when one of us non-Americans introduced something from our own spheres was almost always responded to only by the other non-Americans. Most of the Americans themselves evinced little interest in anything beyond their own borders and then only if it might impact on their lives in some way or other. And on top of that many of them showed more than a little resentment at having that brought to their attention.

In the Political Animal blog I noticed a few more Canadians than I had noticed before. Cathie from Canada, Scotian among others. Erudite, informed, passionate and very active, like me.

Then I found that there were now many more blogs north of the 49th and I began more paying attention. And commenting. Now under my first name only.

Shortly thereafter I was invited to become one of the regular bloggers at The Galloping Beaver. I accepted and for a few years we were a pretty good blog. Good writers. Strong commenters. It felt useful. Blog of the Year award and so on.

So now it's 2020 and I've been hammering away online for 24 years.

Almost a quarter of a century.

Huh.