The handful of classic dial-ups seems melodic, rough and hard, and is inexorably associated with the connection. It is also now silent. AOL’s decision this week to end at the end of the Dial-Up service is not surprising, but it always looks like a closure, the one I have gone through more times that I cannot count on walking on the World Wide Web.
It is a sound immortalized in the 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan Rom-Com You’ve got mailA film in which the incredibly popular AOL service propels the intrigue towards its underside and deeply romantic conclusion.
When I started to cover and work online, AOL was one of the main portals of the new digital world, and the only way to cross this portal was via a numbering modem, a connected to your PC on one side and your telephone line on the other. (Having a telephone line near your computer was a big problem – Children today are spoiled by omnipresent Wi -Fi and at high speed … but I go away.)
In the world still connected today, it is difficult to design the intentionality of this act. In the 1990s, our phones were stupid and your computer treated local networks and files. We called dial-ups “Go online” because it was like making a trip in which the mode of transport was a small box with the magic code to connect to the Internet and, ultimately, the information Surhighway.
Before high speed at home, everyone knew the handshake sound and, yes, millions of people consisted of AOL (America Online) – a separate network – to access the Internet.
If you break down the numbering process, you could consider it as two separate parts: numbering the AOL number, then a negotiation series all designed to ensure that the modem was legitimate and spoke the right language. Once the system on the other side of the connection has been satisfied, you would be connected and will soon hear: “You have mail.”
This mail system was also an integral part of the AOL. There was no gmail, and much fewer people used online messaging systems from Yahoo or even Microsoft (I should add that these days, having a email account @ hotmail.com is similar, for some, to have a message account @ aol.com).
Dial-up began its rapid drop in the late 1990s while cable-owners introduced high speed on a coaxial cable. Instead of knocking on the Internet door with a telephone call, high speed has opened a path open to the digital domain. One day, we had the sound of classic dial-up in my house, and the next day, we did not do it.
Dial-up continued to serve a good objective in the first decade of the new millennium, and broadband has taken years to reach rural communities. In 2009, Netzero attempted to bring Dial-UP back as an affordable alternative to high speed. Imagine someone who tries to sell consumers on the horse and the buggy of decades after the automobile had become omnipresent. It was a terrible plan and, in my opinion, the withdrawal of broadband of a few years.
Even, by 2022, the number of people who still use dial-up had fallen to 175,000. I am sure that the number of today could equip the population of a very small town in a street in average America. I hope AOL supports at least those who still cannot connect to the cable or fiber.
It’s not like we don’t see it coming. In recent years, other large companies with names that start with A have turned their backs on numbering technology.
My sadness is not bored for a better time. It’s really just nostalgia for a digital snapshot, a time when we had to make an effort to connect and wait, in anticipation, while the modem finished its digital handshake before opening the door to reveal the growing world of connections and digital information. I wonder if, perhaps, we appreciated the miracle of the connection more for the effort involved.
We hold it for now; And generation Z, in particular, surely has no idea what it means to initiate the online pump before adding an Instagram publication. But what if they did it? And if, once a year, we said it “dialing day” and you had to run a false MoDem handshake before you can use your laptop or your smartphone?
Ridiculous, I know, but thought makes me smile.
