The Story of New Zealand's Internet

Transcription

Russell Brown – Public Address/Media7

“I think the first kind of things that I would ever put on the Internet would have been comments on newsgroups. Usenet newsgroups were an absolute revelation. I was a customer at ICONZ which was one of the first commercial ISPs. The original group of ICONZ users were a fascinating bunch of people and I still know and regard some of them as friends today. People like David Slack were there. It was quite a wake-up call to find that there were these very intelligent people with plenty to say and great prose styles who weren’t journalists. And I loved that. I think some journalists found that quite threatening and unnerving. You had to learn the ropes of online discussions and that’s something I’ve always been glad I learned early as there’s a lot about that that hasn’t changed.”