Interesting - amusing computer and internet facts.

Do you remember the days before cell phones, computers and the internet? Without giving away my age…I can say confidently that I do. When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s we used a typewriter (gasp!) to type our book reports and term papers on. (If you made a spelling or grammatical error and noticed it when you were done…well, you were pooched…white out anyone?). If I wanted a private conversation on the phone with my boyfriend I had to walk 10 feet into another room and drag the 20 foot curly cord with me while simulatenously beating back the other siblings who just had to use the phone at that exact moment and god, no, there was no caller ID or call waiting! You needed to research a subject for school or find information on an event? Go to the library, look through the card catalog or encyclopedia (do they even have these anymore?), find your subject title, hunt down the book and then read it. Wow…what a lot of work! I remember when the internet became available while I was working in an office. I distinctly recall marveling that I could send an email across the world and not really have to pay for it, like you would a long distance phone call. It still boggles my mind most of the things we can do in this age of technological advancement. While musing over this very subject I came up with 10 interesting facts about the age of technology….and can you guess where I came up with these facts???? The internet of course!

1. The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Englehart and was made of wood.

2. There over a BILLION users on the internet and this is growing daily.

3. By 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the internet.

4. A computer bug was so named after a moth was found in a relay calculator (primitive computer…besides of course, the abacus…which, really was the original computer) and caused the machine to malfunction.

5. Email has been around longer than the world wide web.

6. The internet was started in 1957 and went live in 1969 between the University of California Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute.

7. The average 21 year old has spent 5,000 hours playing video games, exchanged 250,000 emails/instant messages/texts and 10,000 hours on the cell phone. Hmph, maybe my youth library excursions weren’t so time consuming and wasteful after all.

8. There are one million domain names registered every month. I wonder ….. we will ever run out of names?

9. The number of text messages sent and received in any given day is greater than the ENTIRE WORLD’S POPULATION. And most of them come from 13 year old girls. Just kidding!

10. Approximately 365 million people have computers in the world, but half of the world’s population (6.5 billion) have never seen or used a TELEPHONE.

So there you have it folks. You’ll be computer and internet trivia fact ready at your next cocktail party!