People, already comfortable with its workings, constantly referred to it as a place as though the interconnected network of search services, FTP servers, news updates and e-mails were some kind of geographic location in a virtual world. In some ways, it was like a modem-driven bulletin board system (BBS): a local connection could put interesting text files and games at your fingertips. In other ways, it wasn`t: BBSs came with friendly menus and a local community.

The internet was best accessed through cryptic Unix interfaces, and you soon found out that the community was global and could be very hostile to new users. There was hostility closer to home too: Telkom took great delight in policing bulletin boards and shutting them down if it caught them exchanging each other`s mail directly or over the internet. But, if you had a direct connection, this new global network was there to be explored. Searching for information meant mastering the rigid syntax of tools like Gopher, and the act of searching became a popular game known as the Great Internet Hunt. Interacting with the internet meant learning not one, but many different applications and techniques.