Stacy Horn
Why did you first get online? 1982. I was working in telecommunications and I came across what were then called electronic bulletin boards systems, aka BBS’s. I explored them for a while, but they were filled with teenage boys, and while they were occasionally charming in a “Big Bang Theory” way, they weren’t places I wanted to keep coming back …
Design of Relational Database
This is a relational database with a web site interface. The platform will display bios and contributions and historical timeline. It will also overlap current events, women’s history and internet history from 1980-1999 onto the biographies.
Gabrielle Shannon
Why did you first get online? Some time in early 1994. Didn’t do much for me in the early days, but Kyle (my husband) seemed excited about it. When did you first get involved with digital and why? In the early summer of 1994, Kyle and I took a 2 week vacation to the mountains of Pennsylvania and he brought …
Dina Kaplan
Why did you first get online? I first got online in college. This was 1991 and 1992, and every few weeks I’d head to a computer room in a public building to check this weird but cool new thing called email. I’d send out a few messages and then return weeks later to see if the person I was connecting …
Margaret Bates
Why did you first get online? I used an intranet at Citibank as a VP in the Humanware department, from 1989 to 1991; at Downtown Digital, in the early 90’s, I used AOL. When did you first get involved with digital and why? My first involvement with digital was producing computer-assisted video discs in the 80’s. One project was for …
kHyal
Why did you first get online? 1985 on a Hayes Smartmodem. Soon after, I joined an Amiga Users Group at Yale University and became a frequent contributor to their BBS. My passion for computing drove me to create digital animation and video art, MIDI music recordings and live performances, and to publish a series of communications as well as mouse-drawn …
Women’s Internet History Project Launches with NYC Event
Women’s Internet History Project launched its first event on August 12, 2010. The conference room was packed with women from all aspects of involvement with providing a purpose and usage of the internet and digital. The support from the attendees was overwhelming. Advisory board members Gloria Feldt and Mary Boone provided sound advice on the organization. Several luminaries came to …
Lori Schwab
Why did you first get online? The why is the same as the when. For a job I had at the time, we needed to be inline or ahead of the communications curve, which is why and when I got my first external Hayes modem — remember those? This was followed with my first email account with CompUServe. It was …
Aliza Sherman
Why did you first get online? I first used an external modem to connect with a BBS in 1987 on my Amstrad 1640 desktop computer. I had purchased the computer and a dot matrix printer to type out my many stories that I had hand written into spiral notebooks since I was in grade school. I had dreams of publishing …
Brenda Scott
Why did you first get online? In 1982, I was in the Navy and stationed in London England right out of a 3 week computer school. It was there, that I found that we could actually type back and forth to Pensicola, FL to get our advancement test scores before anywhere else in the fleet. We would be the ones …
Danielle Cyr
Why did you first get online? I had moved to LA and my sister told me about an LA BBS. I thought it would be a good way to meet people in my new city. For the most part, though, it was just creepy guys trying to pick up girls. 😉 It was a “prehistoric” Facebook. When did you first …
Lydia Kidwell Sugarman
Why did you first get online? Mine wasn’t the earliest experience. I saw and sent my first emails in 1992 w/o really understanding how it worked. But, I was so intrigued, blown away really by this new disruptive technology. At the time, I was selling syndicated television programming for a new company called Summit Media that has gone on to …
Cecilia Pagkalinawan
Why did you first get online? In 1993 bought a Mac PowerBook and it came with a “fax modem” and an AOL start-up disk. That was when I first went on the internet and got an e-mail account. When did you first get involved with digital and why? I was working as a media specialist at Young & Rubicam. I …
Dara Tyson
Why Did You First Get Online? Coming out of the book publishing/retailing world, I was attuned to what was happening in the industry from the mid 80s because of professional necessity. At home, we had a TRS 80 back in 1987 and graduated to an IBM XT in 1989. This was all pre-Windows and MS-DOS wasn’t intuitive to use nor …
Marina Zurkow
Why did you first get online? In 1992 I bought my first modem and joined echo. It was a social move, a move made out of curiosity and a growing penchant to hide out in the world of text (I never loved the phone and I still prefer email). I was more of a lurker than participant, but I found …
Laura Rich
JWhy did you first get online? Originally? We had an Apple IIe at home in the early 1980s. Otherwise, 1993, AOL and Panix. When did you first get involved with digital and why? I took over a column at Inside Media, where I was a reporter, covering the digital doings of advertisers, from CD-ROMs to the new websites they were …
Suzanne Romanick Lainson
When did you first get involved with digital? First online in 1993. Why did you first get online? I was getting my masters degree in Integrated Marketing Communications at the University of Colorado/Boulder. One of the electives was a class being taught at the Apple Media Research Lab, which was in Boulder. We were required to get modems and get …
Courtney Pulitzer
Why did you first get online? I got online because I had to! My boss at the time, David Boorstin, went to a conference at the AIGA and came back the next day saying, “We’ve got to get online! We need a website! We need to get Netscape!” I was his only employee so it was up to me to …
The Reasons – Tery Spataro
I have so many reasons for wanting to make this project come to life. First let me tell you a bit about my own story. I got involved with digital back in 1986. I was a struggling traditional graphic designer. My friend, Caroline Kavanagh showed me how to use a Mac in exchange for teaching her how to spec type …
Platform Design
The platform will be relational database with a web site interface. The platform will display bios and contributions and historical timeline. It will also overlap current events, women’s history and internet history from 1980-1999 onto the biographies. The behavior and structure of the database is demonstrated in this illustration:
Inception
The inception of the project began as a problem solving exercise on digital memorials between Aliza Sherman and Tery Spataro. As the conceptualization progressed, both recognized an issue with lack of historical acknowledgement and recognition of women who were responsible for creating purpose and usage of the internet. The solution was a process to leveraging the strength in technology to …