From Russia with a friendly "Hello!"

The late Steve Jobs changed my life and Steve Case of America Online expanded my sphere of friends.

For those of you who weren't around at that time, back before there was a World Wide Web, there was America Online. AOL replaced a clunky email service called "CompuServe." That service made your Mac act like a D-O-S machine with "command prompts" and all that geeky garbage.

My Apple Macintosh (shown in the video screenshot photo above) was created by Jobs and produced by his Apple crew introduced me to computing and what it could do for my work in Corporate Communications, i.e., advertising, publications, etc. The D-O-S gang was not showing me anything that made me want to buy a computer.

After AOL's Steve Case sent me, free, a 3.5-inch hard-cased "floppy," I stuck in my Mac and it dialed a local telephone number, all by itself. Now, I had a communications tool with a "graphical user interface," unknown to IBM users. AOL totally crushed CompuServe as an "online service," all accomplished, back then, with dial-up modems.

At that time, I was reading a magazine meant for computer gurus called Boardwatch. Somewhere in one of the issues I found the lengthy email address of a fellow by the name of Arcady Khotin. He lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, and worked with computers. In fact, it was the era of perestroika in the Soviet Union and free enterprise was entering a virginal marketplace. While teaching at a local college, my new friend was attempting to start a business developing automation systems for companies and entrepreneurs in Russia.

We had some great conversations. About cultures, family, business, politics. Then, on a December evening in 1993, a greeting from Arcady was read by Brian Williams (substituting for anchor Tom Brokaw) on NBC Nightly News. I about fell over. Next day, my colleague in our Communications Department at Blue Cross, Claudia Danovic, the first female anchor at WDAY-TV, Channel 6, contacted the NBC affiliate in Fargo (ND) and told them I was actually communicating with the person mentioned on the network newscast.

VIDEO NEWS CLIP: Channel 11 sent a crew to my house and I walked them through "how" I communicated with Arcady in Russia on my Mac SE. When I heard the sad news of the passing of Steve Jobs, I remembered how the Mac expanded my world, literally. And I remembered Arcady (I've since lost touch with him, this post may lead to re-establishing contact). In my personal VHS (remember those?) archive, I found the Channel 11 story by Dave Hovde, introduced by anchor Robin Huebner. With the permission of KVLY-TV, I've posted that video interview with me on YouTube and you can watch it by CLICKING HERE.  (when clicking on links, you may have to "RIGHT-click" on the link and choose "open in NEW WINDOW")

Back then, when 20-megs of hard drive cost $500 and modems were all about using regular  telephone lines, I couldn't imagine sharing a video with the world. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Here, in 2011, we witness magic happening--via our computers and the World Wide Web--every day.