Where was the Internet When I was a Kid?

When I was attending college back a century or so ago, and my high school friends were scattered hither and yon at other temples of higher learning, we communicated largely by letters and postcards. Long distance phone calls were too expensive.

Then one of us got the bright idea to send audio cassettes back and forth so that we could, at least, hear each others' voices. Swell! Quickly, this form of communication within our small, closed audience became something of an art form, as one or the other of us would try for more audio "special effects," surprises, clips from songs, etc. It became commonplace to receive a tape back with snippets of your own previously sent tape included, juxtaposed with music clips, Cheech & Chong or Firesign Theatre excerpts and other such silliness.

It was great fun, and became almost a hobby for some of us. The process, when done right, could take hours (or even days) as one crafted a tape using nothing more than a little cassette recorder, a microphone and a record player with a some sort of pause mechanism. A lotta work!
While we were doing all this, I thought there must be a business opportunity here somewhere (the same instinct that I apply to most everything today). However, there was never enough time, or focus, to pursue it.

The other day, I came across ijustine.com, which is piloted by a young lady name Justine Ezarik out on the West Coast. I must be the last person on the planet to have tripped over her stuff, because she's prolific. she twitters, blogs, makes cute movies that she shows on YouTube...also apparently she does some modeling (and with good reason as she's very pretty). The point of all this is that a creative 24-year-old woman has been able to nuture an enterprise through her own self-generated entertainment. And it ain't hard....anybody with the ability to learn and the drive can do the same thing and garner Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. And all we had were tape recorders and the U.S. mail.

Oh, where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?