Ask any old skool geek and they will remember dialup. Not only will
they remember the tones of that modem with glee (sad?) but they will
remember the day that they got hold of the latest and greatest
compression protocol that would allow them to squeeze more bandwidth
connection out of their phone line.

Yes kids, it was never like the broadband we have today. It was
narrowband, dialup - you had to wait up to a minute to connect 'into'
the network - was never always there and your computer made a series
of cryptic noises to be able to communicate with the outside world.
The musical interlude was a constant reminder that you were connecting
to somewhere exciting, you were becoming a node on a bigger world
ourside of your room. You were going out onto the world wide web of
'things'

I remember the day my US robotics 33.6k arrived. Mine was black, not
white like the photo i put on this blog post but i liked the
perspective of the shot on this one. I think i had an internal card
at some point as well. Yes kids we used to have things attached to
the outside of our computers that made noises that did nothing but
provide us with a gateway to another place. The weirdest thing
about the modem was how you started to get used to the way that the
modem made a connection. You could tell when you would get a solid
connection or not. After a while i could predict if i got a solid
33.6k connection or not. Back then you were connecting to a bank of
devices and you sometimes never managed to connect to a unit that
fully supported your new all singing latest firmware with new
compression modem.

It was all about the compression back then, a new modem with a new
standard came out - now we just upgrade to provide the connection and
have forgotten how that devices gets us there. as long as it gets us
there. It's the way social media is going, like making a phone call
- you never question that the phone call might not get through, we
assume it will. Social media will become as second nature as
connecting via broadband as we do today. It will just work and
you'll not know the work that went into getting that message to you.
transparent hardware. We have come a long way.