DIAL-UP MODEMS
Wired devices that encoded and decoded signals through the telephone cables in order to provide Internet access for the cost of a phone call. (NB: There were no actual dials on the devices.)
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At the end of 2001: Space Odyssey, the rogue machine HAL sings "A Bicycle Built for Two," but come the 1990s, we all knew the real song of a metamorphosing computer.
It started with a lulling dial tone, then came the little beeps of a phone being dialed, then a series of longer beeps bouncing back and forth, and then static… and more static… and then screeching that sounded a little bit like your computer might be coughing up phlegm. Is this what it sounds like in space? Will it work this time? Is someone trying to call? Is it going to need to try another number? The agony! The ecstasy! And then… "You've got mail!" You'd entered the future.
In 2008, the Pew Research Center reported that the population of dial-up users has been steadily dwindling since 2001, despite the fact that it is still the cheapest way to access the Internet. The number of people using broadband devices surpassed the dial-uppers in 2005; today, only a scant one out of ten Internet users still has to listen to the crackle of devices going through their cyber-handshake ritual. Thanks to volume control options, there are even fewer of us who need to worry about muffling the modem with a pillow in order not to alert the whole household that we're forgoing sleep in order to hang in a chat room with a random grandma in the Midwest just because… well just because we can.
Other than the fact that they cost less and are available in places where broadband lines sometimes can't reach, it's hard to justify keeping a dial-up modem around-unless you're the kind of person who believes something can only be good if you have to wait for it. Waiting was the name of the game for anyone using modems in the early days of the Web. Keeping your sanity meant keeping a magazine or some knitting within close range of the computer at all times.
But for most of us, slow connections and the noises of the modem elicit memories of a time when the Web wasn't so integral to every part of life-it was something the lucky few had but didn't necessarily need. You could afford to wait. It was for playing and exploring and communicating in small doses that were billable by the minute. The modem's little song could set off a Pavlovian reaction, triggering increases in dopamine just because of everything that our Internet time stood for.
When all systems were go-the modem successfully made its connection, no one had been waken up, and you finally got online-there was a sense of accomplishment that left you hopeful, relieved, and even a little proud. The closest equivalent today might be the ritual of searching for, and then connecting to, that one bar of an unlocked wireless network that can only be accessed when your laptop is atop the fridge. But it's not really the same.
