Word: modem
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...prices are so low that you can get a 180-MHz Pentium-compatible system with a fast modem, huge hard drive, lots of memory, multimedia equipment and a decent monitor for less than $1,000--prices never seen for comparably priced equipment in industry history...
Case's own tastes were going digital. He bought a Kaypro, a clunky home computer connected to a snail-paced modem. Even for a hobbyist, the machine was a nightmare--hard to set up, impossible to maintain, boring to use. But the modem was a revelation. As he connected to early online services such as CompuServe and the Source, Case felt the electronic rapture that would one day seduce millions of AOL users: "There was something magical about the notion of sitting in Wichita and talking to the world...
Sometimes, though, good things come in bad diskettes. When AOL crashed for 19 hours last August, Cassell wrote a takeoff of the classic Don McLean tune, which he titled Bye, Bye Amer'ca Online. ("So bye bye to Amer'ca Online/ Drove my modem to a domain and it's working just fine./ And good old geeks are cheering users offline/ Saying this'll be the day that they die.") Like most amusing online spore, it flew around the Net, causing a number of people to E-mail Cassell their thanks. One of them became Cassell's live-in girlfriend...
...Want more bandwidth? You'll be able to get it soon, if you happen to have a spare $50 million. The federal government is financing university research into a new Internet technology called the gigapop, that will connect at a screaming speed ? 1 million times faster than a 28.8 modem. But considering the cost of the traffic-sorting gigapops, only the giant telcos such as MCI will be able to afford them when they arrive, in approximately 2002. Small-time service providers will most likely be left to wither on the slower-connection vine: One analyst predicts the gigapop could...
...lets anyone with a computer and a modem compete mouse to mouse with mainstream media. (Drudge's publishing empire is the living room of his Hollywood apartment.) But many of the Net's would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins are journalistic novices and wouldn't think, say, to ask court or police sources to confirm a rumor. Character assassination, like everything else online, happens at warp speed, which is why some say there's no way to correct damage to one's reputation--or protect one's privacy...