I was so excited to get road runner, which was an isp from I think time warner, rolling out cable modem service in the early 2000s. I ended up taking a day of vacation just to ensure I was going to be home for the installation window.

I don’t remember if my computer at the time had built-in Ethernet or if I had to buy a card.

I have been always-online ever since. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

But I do still miss the BBS scene.

Getting a job in a mom-and-pop ISP back in 1999. Our uplinks were so constrained that with 40 dial-in lines, we needed to run our own bandwidth-throttled NNTP cache to prevent one or two customers relentlessly trawling Usenet making life horrible for the others. Fun times.

I had the first iPhone and distinctly remember telling people "I have the entire internet in my pocket at all times" and people finding it strange. I said "I never really have to log off Facebook or Digg" and my friends didn't understand what I meant.

It changed with smartphones being widespread, so more or less yes, 2012

For me it was ‘02 when I moved to college and got that sweet dorm room internet. Some of my friends had aim via text messaging.

2012 is a good date for roaming internet, although for the plans and places I’ve been it’s only been the last 3 or so years that roaming internet has been mostly reliable.

I want to say I was online by default earlier, just because I preferred that life to my offline one, but online clearly hadn't become 'real life' yet. Sure, your online life could affect your offline life if you really wanted to make it happen or were just really dumb, but whatever did happen online, it could be brushed off and you could Just™ wash your hands of whatever happened and go and do something else, be that play a different game, browse a different forum, or just log off.

Saying that what happens on the internet doesn't actually matter nowadays is clearly untrue given even just the most cursory look at the state of the world today.

Depends what you mean.

There's 'offline by default at home' and 'offline by default overall'. And it can blur.

At least as far as 'offline by default at home'

After (1) my dad retired and bought a brand new fancy PC with some of his unused leave time [0] we wound up getting a dial-up account [1] but sometime around 1998/1999 [2] we wound up just getting a secondary phone line; somehow the 'internet' was so magical to all of us kids or young adults, that it was better for our parent's budget to just pay for the extra phone line.

Still, it wasn't even 56K. Phone lines in my area of Detroit were garbage, if it did connect at 56K it was unstable as hell, 28.8 was the 'reliable' connection rate, to the point you prayed that was what it connected at.

For 'offline overall' the change can be more blurry, at least in my head. I blame work phones, my PSP's WiFi capabilities, and the HTC Dream (released 2008) as the slow shift for me.

FWIW, I did enjoy my time on WinPho, where the siloing of the OS and lack of apps, led to a quieter time where my phone was a 'phone' (and honestly, still a better one at calls, SMS, or driving navigation than than my current one) rather than be tempted by anything online.

It's weird to think about. Before I went to college, Online (thanks to that dial-up) was an escape from the prison of my home and where I lived. But now Online feels more like a tug away from enjoying life.

[0] - P2 266 MHZ 32MB Ram, 2(? might have been 4) GB HDD...

[1] - Thanks Diablo for the WorldNet trial and thanks WorldNet for having the practically unlimited usage thing [4]

[2] - My oldest Sister was Driving home from College and the engine on the car blew up while I was online. She couldn't call for help. [3]

[3] - How's that for a technology shift though, as far as taking things for granted (i.e. call waiting being seamless and not costing extra per month.)

[4] - Except for the bit where when AT&T somehow figured out we were using a 'Share-dial-up-over-LAN' a few years later, had to switch to Mindspring after dad had me do the research.