2022-10-29 Tech Gap

Browsing through neocities made me realize how different my online experience is, as a kid from poor family living in Global South, compared to the experience of everyone from North America/Europe/the rest of Global North. I did not really experience Web 1.0 era of internet, not because I am young (I am, in fact, pushing 30 now) but because 1.) Computer was (still is) expensive and unaffordable for average people, 2.) Internet access was still very...rare.

I consider myself to be previleged, in a way that despite the fact that my family was poor, we were still lucky enough to be living in a big city. I had access to library. I had access to a public study center. I could save my pocket money to go to "internet cafe". In early 2000s I have visited websites on the internet. Not everyone in this country was so lucky. Some of my coworkers, around the same age as I am, have never even touched a computer to this day. One of them hadn't even know what a cellphone was until 2012/2013.

I am also previleged in a way that I can speak English now. 20 years ago I didn't speak English at all. So my early experience with Internet was limited to local forums, local mIRC rooms, and some flash-based games websites. I didn't spend my childhood reading people's personal website on geocities, angelfire etc. I only became aware of them in highschool as my English language skill was gradually improving.

Technology comes late to Global South people especially if you are poor and unable to speak English. Since personal computer was unaffordable for most people I didn't have a chance to learn things like coding. I mean, it's not impossible. Some of my friends stayed in internet cafe for hours (at times even pulling an all-nighter there) teaching themselves html and simple software programming. But for most people it was just not feasible.

And then cellphones with GPRS happened. It was probably mid 2000s. Cellphones started to become more and more affordable. People could access WAP Internet through their phone. I don't know how popular WAPsites were in Global North. As far as I know mobile internet data was (and still is?) very expensive in North America. For some reason mobile internet quota is relatively cheap in my country. At some point there were even trick/hack to get you free mobile internet data and I spent hours reading Death Note manga scanlation on my Sony Ericsson K510i's 1.8 inches screen. More and more people accessed internet through their phone.

People still went to internet cafe to browse websites. The social media Friendster became popular in my country. We've never gone through MySpace era. MySpace was more American thing. But we spent a lot of time using Opera Mini app on our java or symbian phone to browse wapsites/sites written in WML. Sites like mobamingle, peperonity, my wap blog, myopera mobile blog, waptrick, getjar, ownskin, wen.ru etc. We also chatted through apps like ebuddy, mxit, mig33, nimbuzz etc.

The thing is, mobile phones has always been my primary device to access internet, long before android phone exists. I understand that these days mobile internet is something terrible that people try to escape from but for me, and for many people in my country, mobile phone is for accessing internet. We didn't go through dial-up phase. Only rich people could afford ISP. I have only gotten broadband internet last year. For many people it is still expensive and it still only covers limited area in the country.

I was aware of web 1.0 and early web 2.0 era of personal websites when I was younger. I visited some of them through Opera Mini browser on MY PHONE. But I don't feel the same kind of "nostalgia" about them. I appreciate them. I think they're cool but at the end of the day I was not part of that culture. I have always been a mobile internet user, since at least 2006/2007. I made WAP blogs. The only HTML related thing I knew was copy-pasting cool graphics to my Friendster profile, copy-pasting blogspot and livejournal layout and that's it. The idea of building a personal website from a scratch was unbelievable to me, at least until I got web programming class in school and even then I couldn't understand what the teacher was talking about so I retain zero information from that class.

Learning how to use neocities now as a grown adult is both frustrating and exciting. I am not planning to be "good" at webmastering. I just want to have a personal website in this era of digital capitalism, that's all. I admire people's passion and vision and aesthetic in building their websites. I just wish that people stop assuming if someone is unfamiliar with the old Web 1.0 that means they're young. I also wish that people stop being so hostile to mobile users. Technology gap/inequality exists. I'm an adult from Global South. My internet experience is different than yours and that's fine because we all want better internet, free from corporation, free from surveillance, free from harrasment, for everyone in the world.