Mrs. Rubin made the announcement about the new club she was starting at the junior high school, it triggered something in

Two weeks later, during the last month of my eighth grade year, I figured it out. I was rummaging through the basement, and

I ran across the little blue box that my dad had brought home from work a year earlier. Could this be a modem?

I asked Mrs. Rubin about it the next day at school, and when she verified my expectations, I became the first member of

Teleport 2000, the only organization in the city dedicated to introducing students to the information highway.

This was when 2400-baud was considered state-of-the-art, and telecommunications was still distant from everyday life. But

as I incessantly logged onto Cleveland Freenet that summer, sending e-mail and posting usenet news messages until my

fingers bled, I began to notice the little things. Electronic mail addresses started popping up on business cards. Those

otherwise-incomprehensible computer magazines that my dad brought home from work ran monthly stories on

communications-program this, and Internet-system that. Cleveland Freenet's Freeport software

download anything from virus-detection utilities to song lyrics and guitar tabs. I receive press releases, proclamations and international news from the White House

that it thrusts people together in a strange new world, one in which they get to rub virtual shoulders with characters they might otherwise never meet."

system of gopher and search services. As a result, a million more people join the 'net every month, according to a 1994 article by Vic Sussman in U.S. News

keyboard, stopping only to sleep. When I went back to school in the fall, I was elected the first president of Teleport 2000, partially because I was the only student

all over the world, in places as far away as Finland and Germany - with free telnet access!

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The reason for this is simple. The people who created this form of communication weren't interested in that. They didn't care about political or ethnic boundaries;

will not be puzzled by the word "Internet" or the mechanics behind networking - these will be basic survival skills in society. The future will see an

they only cared about the abstract. As a result, the parallel world they conceived contained a true form of equality. "One computer is no better than any other, and

Some common words found in the essay are:
Finland Germany, , Suneel Ratan, Space Odyssey, Internet Dummies, Local Networks, Cleveland Freenet, Levine Baroudi, World Report, President Clinton, becoming aware, information highway, dad brought, brought home, teleport 2000, dad brought home,
Approximate Word count = 922
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)