How do you keep in touch?

I started using a desktop computer (Apple II, 3 mhz processor, 800 mb storage drive, one-color-text screen display) in the early 1980s to correspond with friends that had similar interests (my topics were computer graphics, education, writing, and cars) through dial-up bulletin boards. My computer could call the telephone modem for a particular bulletin board and most messages were available to all callers. Of course, I also kept in touch by word-processing letters that were printed and mailed by the US Postal Service.

In 1988 I registered with AppleLink for communication services provided by Quantum, which became America Online in 1989. The graphic-user-interface provided by AOL was more attractive than the command-line-interface used by other services (of course I also had accounts with Prodigy, CompuServe, and GEnie) and members could send private messages immediately or to a virtual mailbox. I still have an AOL address for email.

In 2002 (MySpace), 2003 (LinkedIn), 2004 (Facebook), 2005 (YouTube) and 2008 (Twitter) social networking websites were developed. There are 200,000,000 worldwide Facebook users, about 1/5 of the 20% of the world's population who use the Internet regularly, that's about 1 billion people with access to the Web. I'm not surprised that some facebookers are confused by email, profile updates, and comments, and I'm not surprised that most email, facebook profiles and comments are not interesting.

Quick history lesson: the ARPANET link between universities was established in 1969 and grew to more than 200 hosts by 1981. TCP/IP has been used since 1978 to unify networking methods. The US Department of Defense established MILNET in 1983, followed by other government branches in Wide Area Networks. In 1993 the World Wide Web was built on hypertext and browser engines, and the Internet became popular and commercial. Cyberdyne Systems began development of Skynet, but the US Air Force took over when the facility was destroyed, then Skynet became self-aware in 1997 and eliminated over 3 billion humans in a few minutes to protect its existence. Are you still with me?