1991

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Salaan...

 

Do you remember where you were in that year? A lot of us were running from somewhere to nowhere, I know, I know.

 

If I think I recall correctly in that trying year, the new year was of 1991 was born in xaafada Madiina, moving from where the fierce fighting was on in our home located at xaafada Hodan. Then it was to Baydhabo, Waajid, back to Xamar and, because of another useless fight (the fight the article below discusses), to Dayniile for few weeks.

 

But what I couldn't believe is a real Jaamac at the same time was foruming on the NET in these enduring times! Yes, in 1991, a Soomaali man was on the Internet (or what was then largely a usenet discussion groups), giving his nomadic two cents where the mother of all forums/discussion boards was born--newsgroups.

 

I believe Jaamac Barre must be the first Soomaali person to use the net, a decade before even this very site was founded in 2001.

 

I haven't even heard the Internet 'til 1997!

[Castro]

Originally posted by Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar:

I believe

Jaamac Barre

must be the first Soomaali person to use the net, a decade before even this very site was founded in 2001.

That has got to be true. Mr. Barre was one of the first, if not the first Somali person I met online. At the time, late '94 early '95, he'd been working at Cyrix after leaving IBM. Oh how things have changed. I wonder where he is now. A pioneer in his own right and a fellow nomad on the once booming soc.culture.somalia of yesteryear. Unfortunately, life happened and we lost contact.

 

If anyone knows Jama Barre please PM me any information you may have on him.

 

Oh, I was in Ottawa, Canada in 1991 freezing my skinny behind.

[Jacpher]

I don't know Jaamac Barre but if that's true, he's indeed a pioneer. I think it was late 1996 when I first heard the world of Internet, text-only Usenet newsgroup/discussion. With help of a schoolmate, I setup my first ever email in 1997.

 

In 1991, if I remember correctly, I was in Kismaayo attending school as usual. Suddenly, our classrooms became bedrooms for XABAD KEENTO, refugees from Mogadisho. Next we know our teachers were all evacuated to their home country. There goes my dream of graduating from Khalid Bin Waleeb School. I think this happened either in mid January or early February. Then Siyad Barre arrived in Kismaayo and one day later, left the city for Buur dhuubo. We lost electricity the night of his departure. The next few days, people in the city were all celebrating that Siyad left and a better government is about to be born. What happened next was the biggest ever PUNK’D I have ever witnessed in life. Morgan and his dhafoorqiiq army came and violently looted the city as they categorized people into groups, setting up the groundwork for qabilsm. We got punk’d up big time. I think I was lucky to have left the country the following year.

[Caano Geel]

the dude helped develop the instruction set for the POWER 2 processors ... hardcore ...

 

Coincidently along with a number of skinies they compiled a somali dictionary for translating computing terminology . It seems so strange, to have somali words for such things, let alone that they came up with a term for a multiplexer!! those must of been the days!

.. fidel, this dude might be the best way to get hold of him, he hosts the dictionary Jaamac muuse jaamac

 

1991 london, dazed and confused

[MD]

Interesting i've never heard of Jamac Bare, good to know he was the first somali person to use the net.

 

1991 Ottawa, Canada

[Castro]

Google and ye shall find, eh? Thanks CG. I'm going to do a search on Jama and other historic nomads tonight. Jama took hardcore to a level I didn't think was feasible for skinnies. I tried to follow in his footsteps and even landed an internship with IBM at some point. Years later I inteviewed with a firm in Austin, TX and the first thought in my head upon landing in the airport was: Jama could have walked these very same steps.

 

Back in soc.culture.somalia (known to us lovingly as The Cave), there was another man, much like our NGONGE here, who could captivate an audience and bring a school yard full of kids to complete silence. His name was Sir Ato (a.k.a The Caveman). He was an eccentric man, a young man who looked as if the 60's had left him behind. He crisscrossed Canada in his fully equipped van. If I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting him in person years ago, I'd remain convinced to this day he was myth. I'm looking for him as well.

 

Jama, along with the first Somali internet settlers, created soc.culture.somalia. It was very much like SOL but different at the same time. Then, most people used their real names and email addresses as stalker alerts were few and far in between. Old man moment: Those were really the days.

 

So, if anyone knows Sir Ato, let me know. I'd even pay you for that information.

[shyhem]

Sadly most of ya'll are older than previously thought.You know you're old when you start talking about internet and 1995.........You properly have kids in college now.

[Castro]

Originally posted by shyhem:

Sadly most of ya'll are older than previously thought.You know you're old when you start talking about internet and 1995

Shyhem, '95 was 10 years ago dude. And why sadly? These mile posts we're at you will reach too if you're fortunate that is.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Salaan...

 

I see I am not alone surprising to find that fella existed.

 

Speaking of the 'Net and my novice days in back mid '97, every time I remember I can't help but laugh. I was new to high school and I self-taught the Internet with my very few and far limited English, let alone computer terminologies. I kept our librarian at school mad because I used to print countless papers oblivious to me (I didn't know what "print" meant then and I being a real maryooleey learned on mistakes and kept going).

 

Also there was a site called somali.com, a mainly chat-based site with a little discussion group. It existed until in mid '98 when the fellas at the upcoming somalinet hacked, shut down and stole its chatroom code. There was a mass departure to somalinet within a week. That was how somalinet was born, a questionable deed indeed.

[Haddad]

I have used the Internet for the first time in 1996. Back then, AltaVista was one of the most famous seach engines. I remember there was a Somali site named Nomad Net, where a certain Michael Maren used to post articles. Fortunately, there's Internet Archive, a site that provides a snapshot of what websites looked like in the past. For example, the following is a snapshot of SomaliaOnline on October 02, 2001:

 

[Castro]

^^^ Michael Maren and his NomadNet are both alive and well.

 

His book, The Road To Hell, is an absolute must read.

[Gediid]

Jama Barre and Jama Muse Jama are pioneers in their own right.If I am not mistaken the last I heard of Jama Barre he lived in San Jose, CA but that was in the late ninties.I have no idea where he has gone since.....

 

Anyone here remember the MIRC...I spent hours and hours chatting there late ninties.If I remember correctly when I first started using it there was only a handful of people but within a year hundreds were logging into #Somalia which was owned by a guy with the nick of Haxpert.

[Jacaylbaro]

in that year i remember I was back to normal

 

[MR ORGILAQE]

The new year of 1991 i was visiting my brother in a small town called Tyringe in sweden.I remember it was cold as hell that new year,and our new year plans were interupted by news of the start of this damned civil war.What a miserable night it was

[NGONGE]

1991? I wonder what sort of PC he used in 91! Back then, one would imagine, a 286 was state of the art.

 

My introduction to the net came in late 92 early 93 (I think). Since I was not much of a geek, I found the whole thing boring. However, one day, while browsing my local library, I came across a book called the Silicon Bug (or at least that’s what I think it was called). I found the book fascinating, not only for its content but also for its author’s background. He left school at the age of sixteen and went to work in various low paying jobs before deciding to return to university and start a degree in mathematics at the age of 27. He later became a professor of mathematics and technology at one of the UK’s biggest institutes (can’t remember which one now).

 

The book itself was even more remarkable. It was almost Orwellian in it’s prophecies. The book was written in the late 70s or early 80, still this professor was presenting a vision of a future of e-mail, chat rooms, videoconferences, mobile phones, freedom of expression, sabotage, espionage and online capitalism. It read like a science fiction novel, and I most certainly was not a science fiction fan (well, unless you call someone liking Dr Who and The Bionic Woman a science fiction fan – I never liked Steve Austen by the way). Reading that book caught my interest and I wanted to know and learn more about the subject. I enrolled on an Information Technology course (one where the college concerned did not even have net access).

 

My fascination with everything ‘net’ related led me to visit the world’s first ever net café in 1994 (or was it 93?). Cyberia was a great place that was full of geeks sipping coffee and eating muffins. Mosaic was the big thing back then and net browsing was ‘super fast’. Though it was also expensive. It was all very exciting back then but though most of it made any sense to me, I still found it fascinating.

 

With time, my IT courses and constant use of the ‘net’ allowed me to pick up some information and start understanding things. But, despite my thirst for knowledge, it seems I really was not that thirsty. I was young and single and did not want to disappoint the girls by locking myself up in a room with a rickety PC. I did not apply myself as much as I would have liked.

 

Still, those were the great times of the net revolution. The third wave, the information superhighway, the communication revolution and a dozen other names were all assigned to this new phenomenon. We in the UK, though we had many of the pioneers of this ‘movement’, did not have as much access to the net as North Americans had.

 

I vividly remember the fuss about the late releasing of Chicago (of course it was later renamed Windows 95). I remember my great super-duper-all-singing-all-dancing-486DX PC. I remember chatting up American girls on the AOL chat rooms (though, as I was noting to a friend the other day, I now think that Cookie – the Georgia girl I used to chat up – might have really been a man after all). We never had cams and microphones back then. We used to exchange telephone numbers. I can vaguely remember an occasion when my friend exchanged numbers with a girl from Washington DC who went by the imaginative name, Pretty MOON. After they exchanged numbers, he tells her (in writing of course) to log off now and plug the phone in (no broadband you see). He logs off and waits for her to call. She does not call. He waits and waits. She does not call. He decides that she’s a tease and logs back on again. He finds her online. She is angry and accuses him of giving her the wrong number! She tells him that she’s crying and would never use the net again. Back then, there were no cynical people online. To cut a long story short, the problem was that he did not plug the phone back in when he was waiting for her call, so she kept on phoning a busy number.

 

In 1995, one of my housemates disappeared for two weeks as a result of a chat room liaison. He later on moved to Glasgow to be near ‘her’. Another friend used to beg for money in chat rooms (he surprisingly got plenty of cash through the post). Those were the days when everyone was innocent and naïve on the net.

 

To tell the truth, everyone is still innocent and naïve online. We just learned to pretend not to be. That’s all.

 

 

PS

Would love to know more about Mr Barre.

 

PPS

I realise this makes me sound older than a comodore 64 but I assure all worried parties that I’m considerably younger than comrade Castro. :cool: