RIDZWAN A. RAHIM was cut off from broadband Internet for a day recently. It provided some quiet time to ponder how people lived during the 56k Internet days.

Certain computers don’t even come with a built-in modem anymore.

MY office was cut off from the Internet for a day recently, and suddenly, things came to a halt. Everyone was at a loss as to how to proceed with his or her normal day-to-day functions.

It was like this particular morning at KL Sentral a few years ago. Rush hour, and there was disruption in the LRT service.

Panic ensued, because people had been relying on the train services so much, they had forgotten how to use the bus.

They had forgotten that in the 1990s, they used to remember which mini bus goes where.
It’s the same with our Internet. Nowadays, the Internet is so much a part of our lives that if we have a PC and it’s not connected to the Internet, we call the PC broken.

(If we have a laptop and it doesn’t come with Wi-Fi connection, we call that broken too. Time to get a new one.)

And not just any type of Internet connection, mind you. Practically everyone (in the city anyway) uses Streamyx or some other form of broadband Internet.

It has been many years since I last saw anyone using dial-up Internet.

Remember what that was like? Remember the time when video on the Internet was unthinkable?

It was 1994 when my brother and I first set up our home computer to access the Internet.

We had signed up with Jaring, bought a 56k dial-up modem and were eager to get online.

We plugged the home phone line into the computer and dialled 1511. Ah, the sweet sound of the modem dialling.

And then we launched Netscape Navigator.

As with all teenaged boys, we tried some picture sites first. But the pictures took too long to download that we gave up after a while.

Then I learnt to sign up for Hotmail and was thrilled when friends e-mailed me.

In university, our faculty e-mail used telnet.

That means our entire e-mail was in monochrome. We could only forward text-based joke e-mails!

Once in a while, we found joy in ASCII arts. These are pictures pieced together using the 95 characters defined by the ASCII computer standard.

(I am typing this on a word processor that uses ASCII characters. I am tempted to create ASCII art now instead of finishing my story.)

Today, dial-up is so passe that you have PCs and laptops that don’t even come with a built-in modem anymore.

Ask me to use dial-up? No thanks. I would rather use smoke signal.