The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

I remember having email when no-one else I knew (or wanted to know) did. It was the electronic equivalent, for a while, of the bean can telephones linked by string that we played with as children.

I also had one of the first mobile phones in Poland, during the testing phase of one of the first networks.  There were plenty of people I could call on landlines, so it wasn't the same experience, but there was again a sense of being a pioneer. What I mostly remember was how awful the service seemed when millions joined a network I had used with a few dozen others!

I wonder how fast the original telephone networks took off – and for how long the pioneer subscribers had no-one to call? I am experiencing something a little like that now.

Second Life finally has a "telephone line" to the outside world in the form of an instant messaging client called SLim. It allows voice or text chat from any computer connected to the internet with people "in world." It's a very good idea – especially for people stuck behind their corporate firewall during the working day or for those running SL businesses who will soon be able to handle enquiries from in-world without having to be drawn into SL – a world which has become even more addictively immersive now that 50% of all communication is by natural voice conversations, rather than on-screen text. I have just downloaded and installed SLim. I can see which SL friends are online, but until they download the application themselves and those little SL hand emblems go from black to green, it's useless! So I guess this 
is what it must have been like to be the first in your circle with a phone.