I've had a personal email account for ...
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
I'm old. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since 80s. My first email address had bangs in it and involved a UUCP connection that was made every 4 hours or so. My current email collection goes back to late January of '97 tho I probably have a couple of mailing list archives that predate that.
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Ah, good ol' Fidonet... Guaranteed to get your mail delivered in six days!
A buddy of mine who ran a fidonet node waited so long to try to register Front Door that he couldn't find anyone to register it with. The software started saying, "Your SysOp is committing piracy! This copy of Front Door has been unregistered for more than Five Years!", and there was no good way at that point to resolve it...
If I had counted Fidonet-enabled BBSes, I could have gone with the 61-80% option. Instead I opted for the 4
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A buddy of mine who ran a fidonet node waited so long to try to register Front Door that he couldn't find anyone to register it with.
Lol! Thanks, that made my day.
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I think a bang-path address definitely qualifies, even though my first bang-path address was through a BBS. I was ...!apple!darkside!xtifr, which implied no affiliation with apple except that apple was a well-known hub that exchanged UUCP traffic with the darkside BBS. The main reason I think it qualifies is that the mail format and access tools (MUAs) that worked with bang-path email are still around and work just fine with modern "at-path" email. In fact, for a while, hybrid systems were common, so onc
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Ditto that: Reed College in 1986, so writing to my dad at Hewlett Packard meant I had to type in the whole UUCP header: reed!ocgvax!hp!hplvla![dadname] or whatever it was, and several times I got some very snippy email back from people in between who said I'd routed personal email through a satellite uplink to Japan and please stop doing that for unimportant messages. Life's so much easier now, although I still have the Amiga in functional condition with all my email from 1987-1998. But I send about the s
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Since 80s. My first email address had bangs in it and involved a UUCP connection that was made every 4 hours or so. My current email collection goes back to late January of '97 tho I probably have a couple of mailing list archives that predate that.
Yup, same for me. I don't recall the whole damn path which streched over a line or two, but remember that it did include lsuc.ca which seemed an appropriate domain name for its holders (Law Society of Upper Canada). I hardly sent or received any emails back then. Then there was the X.400 nightmare which was even more verbose, but luckily sank into oblivion, or at least out of view.
I have email archives going back to about 1990 for work, and about 1993 for personal stuff. I'm not sure if I can still open
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I'm with you. I had an Atari ST that had its very own UUCP software. :-) That's how I got my email. I was only 16 at the time.
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I would suggest most people gained an email account in 1998/1999. This was the time when Windows 98 became popular and internet use exploded.
I still smile when I see white vans advertising email addresses like @aol.com, @demon.co.uk, @NTL.co.uk and all the other now-dead ISPs. I know paying for an email account is beyond 'my dad' but these days there are so many better free email providers.
I voted 33%.
My daughter would have voted 105% - work that one out
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You got a date on email in 1990? (Score:2)
(Yes, I know that's not what you meant :-) A friend of my wrote a filk song called "He's Not On The Net" about the difficulties of maintaining a relationship with somebody who didn't have email, and she only had to update one line in the ~20 years since she first started performing it, but it's changed from being a cutting-edge thing to being puzzling to younger people.
I do know people who met on the net back in the 80s, but that typically also included going to computer conventions where they'd meet IRL
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I get hundreds of emails a week on my personal accounts, most of them automatically generated by forums when something happens and they think I have to know that. I stopped keeping all my emails long ago.
I missread the title (Score:2)
I thought it said "email accounts for X% of my life", like how Facebook accounts for a % of other peoples' lives. Of course I chose, "I don't have one yet", as in "I still don't have a life".
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You probably could have - the Internet was in place in many colleges by then, and email has been standardized since 1973. My mom (a college prof) was emailing people in other colleges in the mid 1980s. I got my first official email account in the late 1980s, though I had something similar on a system of BBSes I frequented prior to that (a kind of inter-BBS messaging system - it was privately written and used, but updated infrequently - once a day I think).
MIT has had email since the early 1960s as I recall,
I like email (Score:5, Funny)
It's so much fun to have an email account. I really like getting all that email from poor girls who can't afford clothing. I feel really bad for them, so I go to their websites and give them money. But then they want money every month, and it gets really expensive. They must be from foreign countries like Canada or something. I feel really bad for Canadians.
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I remember before there was Hotmail..
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When Gmail first came out, introducing the 1GB limit, it seemed like it might as well be infinite.
When GMail came out with its 1GB limit, my mail spool was sitting at about 2.5GB. It's now at 4.6GB. It only goes back to about 1997 though. I had a disk crash around then and lost everything earlier.
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Until recently, fastmail's limit for free accounts was 10MB, though it's now up to 25. Since I use the account there for things that get commercial mailing lists (e.g. Borders, and my wife's classmates.com quasi-spam, and email addresses I give trade shows that get mail from vendors), it did fill up every few months and I'd have to go clean it out.
The worst I've used was a hacked-together-from-kermit system at a previous job that would crash when my inbox reached 200k. After having used Unix mail systems
Wording of this question favours the young (Score:2)
The younger you are, the younger it's possible for you to have gotten email. Old hat techies who were born in 1940 wouldn't be able to break the 50% mark no matter how hardcore they are, but anyone born 1990 or later will probably be able to truthfully pick one of the latter two options.
It's funny, because this is the opposite of how these polls usually go.
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It doesn't favor the young unless you think a higher percentage is "better".
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Old hat techies who were born in 1940 wouldn't be able to break the 50% mark no matter how hardcore they are
Assuming a general public compuserve account in 1982, which is pretty late in the game, they'll hit 50% at the ripe ole age of 74 ... (2024-1982) / (2024-1940)
A guy (basically all guys back then, just like now) who went to university in the 70s, or dialed up those new fangled BBS things in the very late 70s, could do better.
The stereotypical corn chip eatin / mt dew drinkin / never exercisin /.-er is never going to make it to 74, in fact half that would be an achievement, but it is possible.
If you very narr
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That gives me an idea for a poll:
I died when I was:
- > 100 years old
- 90 - 99 years old
- 70 - 89 years old
- 50 - 69 years old
- 20 - 49 years old
- 10 - 19 years old
- 10 years old
- I haven't been born yet, you insensitive clod!
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I came here expecting to complain about options (Score:2)
Hopefully no pedants complain about not having (20,21) %, (40,41) %, and so on.
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That's more than six months from now. The poll would be closed by then.
I'd have picked 41-60 since 60.3 is closer to 60 than it is to 61 but his was a rational choice.
Precisely 30% (Score:2)
Man, and lately I've been feeling like I was old-school just because I remember the noise a 28.8 modem makes. Way to get a perspective.
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TRS-80? ;-)
Maybe you have CRS.
My first modem was 14.4k but I was already in my twenties when I got it.
Juno (Score:2)
I still remember that the question was about the songwriter who did the soundtrack for "She's The One" and that the answer was Tom Petty. It was a pretty big deal to a guy who didn't even have a
Since I was 14, I'm 35 now (Score:2)
Prodigy. DXTH23B. Before that there was none, and this predates internet connections for common folks. I remember getting excited when I could email friends who had AOL at the time! Then it was DXTH23B@prodigy.net, and since then I've had dozens upon dozens of email addresses. I currently use about 15 for various reasons, but gmail aggregates them into one email address for me. I love gmail.
BTW if you're still around NDDF32B gimme a shout ;-)
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Since 1994, Not Including Fidonet/BBS (Score:2)
My first ARPANet-style email account was at hughes.com in 1994. I had an AOL account from the previous year, but didn't use the email feature much, since just about anyone I knew on-line in the late '80's/early '90's was on the three or four "elite" BBSes I frequented. I dicked with Fidonet once or twice, but not having anyone I couldn't contact with a local message, didn't need it.
Hotmail account=Must Have.. (Score:2)
...or yahoo or some other account--you need a place for registration emails for forums etc (unless you WANT to be on their mailing list) or to sign up for rebates, coupons, etc.
This way all of the spam goes to an evil account you visit on a infrequent basis and delete without reading.
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Definition of personal? (Score:3)
How do you define a personal account? At university I had my own email address, but it was ultimately controlled by the university, and I didn't keep it when the course finished.
I have junk mail accounts for use with forums etc, are they personal accounts?
I've had different email addresses as I switched between different internet providers, but as I switch providers, those addresses are deleted.
Eventually I bought my own personal domain name, now that DOES have it's own email accounts and addresses, as I'm the admin.
So depending on what your definition of personal, I get four different answers.
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If you paid for it, it was yours. Since you paid for school, etc.
Heck, I've had the same account for 50% (Score:2)
50% :) (Score:2)
I'm 28 now and pretty sure I got my first email address in grade 8 or 9 at school, so that'd be almost precisely 50% of my life.
I got mine before Beowulf clusters became a cliche (Score:2)
The same one? (Score:2)
Celebrating 15 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
My first email address was in 1991 (NDSU - bison.nodak.edu), then sparc.isl.net when I was done with college. I registered my domain in 1996 and have used the same address since then. In fact, this June will celebrate 15 years of marriage to my email address and my wife!
Three digit slashdot ID, four character .com domain, and married for 15 years - major achievements for a geek!
*digs around for FidoNet ID* (Score:2)
Got my first e-mail account when I was operating a BBS at age 14. It was a string of numbers and punctuation marks that I have since long forgotten.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
It goes way back (Score:2)
Mine was all numbers (Score:2)
I am 42 years old, and my first email address dated from 1982 was all numbers (long gone now), 72766,1640 or later 72766.1640@compuserve.com when they offered an internet gateway. As of a couple of years ago I could still find archived messages online I posted from that address back in the 1980's and early 1990's..
Email? (Score:2)
I'm still stuck on a POTS party line, you insensitive clod!
Missing Options: "100%+" and "0 - 1%" (Score:2)
because I have a personal email address on multiple fronts, the way the question is worded I can only assume that would count as time in addition to the first.
By that metric I'd estimate I've had a personal email address for 700-1200% of my lifetime.
Unless you mean "a" to be "
MTS in 1974 (Score:2)
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Some of us started a while back... (Score:2)
I had email in 1979 in grad school at University, which means 60-80% of my life. In case you're wondering, I graduated rather young.
My kids have email accounts, and use them occasionally (the youngest got one when she was six). Some of their friends also have email accounts. My oldest kid has had one for over half of her life, and now has several.
Personal vs. work/etc. non-personal email accounts (Score:2)
I've also had email for about that long, but it was work email, not personal email, until the mid 90s. Sure, most of my Usenet and mailing list time wasn't really very work related (comp.lang.c and risks-digest mostly was, net.cooking and human-nets wasn't :-), but the email account attached to it was from work.
At some point, having a university email account probably transitioned from something non-personal to basically personal (just like the dorm room phone was basically personal even though it was on
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Don't feed the trolls..
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You could have a ten year old whose parents set up a fun little account shortly after they were born, to receive all the e-cards from well-wishing relatives.
So basically, a box of millions of viagra offers, just waiting for them to come of age.
Re:81-100% ??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:81-100% ??? (Score:4, Funny)
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How is it stupid? I had that idea last year, thought it would be quite cool to do this for your kids (I'm not a parent btw). I didn't realise anyone was actually doing it though - and technically you're not allowed a Facebook account until you're over 12 anyway.
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It depends what the individual considers a waste. Many people (okay, many women) seem to enjoy browsing baby photo albums and such. I think it would be amusing to have all my baby pictures on Facebook.
Spending some time on Facebook is just as worthwhile as spending time on Slashdot if you have entertaining/interesting friends
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In 1996 a technical relative told me (aged ten) to sign up for firstnamelastname@hotmail.com, before it was taken, as it was a great, free service -- no longer would we be stuck with an ISP address. I did, and did the same for my whole family -- including my not-quite-four-year-old brother, who didn't really use the address much until he was ten (just birthday cards from the relative, who lived a very long way away).
My brother still uses that address for chatting on MSN messenger.
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Personal email accounts became feasible in the late 80s.
Says you - my first email account was on CompuServe which I joined around 1981.
Dialup - 300 baud - at some ungodly rate per hour...
They also offered 1200 baud - at twice the hourly rate of 300 baud. What a deal!
BBSers had personal email earlier (Score:2)
It's theoretically possible for somebody to have had personal email since 1978, with the first BBS which used modems, and perhaps earlier if you count the Community Memory Project in Berkeley in 1973 (which used dedicated public-access terminals), though having it continuously since then might be tough. Remember when 110 baud was fast?
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you know was wondering - didn't find a yahoo address but rather - might have found the physical address..
eh.. the net is funny some times..
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So for 100% of their lives...
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So was I, from age 12 up to age 27. I was reading car enthusiast magazines, going to car trade fairs, and I got my license at age 27. And suddenly my interest in car magazines and trade fairs dropped to zero. I bought a station wagon, later a minivan, and now I am driving a company provided minitruck (e.g. a car refitted to meet truck specifications and being licensed as a truck).
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I feel the same. I recall actually sending them an email suggesting they offered a way to download the complete account as an archive. They never responded to that email. Then after the whole thing was bought by Microsoft, they changed it such that it was no longer possible to login from the OS that we used at university, and next they started wiping accounts of everybody who did not login frequently enough.
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That's silly. I do not know why people do the sily thing and use the ISP email account. when you switch ISP companies you lose the email address . Get a gmail or stop being cheap and buy a domain and get a cheap email hosting so you can have Ferk@CheshireFerk.com for ever and ever and ever....
Heck you can even use gmail and your own domain. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=7273f9a54a918139&hl=en [google.com]
Why anyone would use the ISP email account for anything but a trash account I'll n
Mail Forwarding Services / POP/IMAP (Score:2)
The idea of needing your own personal email connection as opposed to work or school email was pretty new back in the early 90s :-) A friend of mine had started an ISP in his bedroom as a way of financing his bandwidth habit, with a fractional T1 service and a bunch of modems his friends could dial into. Eventually it outgrew that space, got moved into an actual office building, and he needed a couple of employees to help run it, bought up some other small ISPs, and eventually sold off his to another Tie
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I've had an email account of one sort or another since 1986. My current one I've had for 9 years.
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Same here... 95... but... that was at delphi.com who stopped hosting email by around 2000.
Oldest email that I can access, right now, without digging through archival copies of old machines?
id 0yQfSC-0000Qb-00; Sat, 18 Apr 1998 17:47:20 -0400
There are a few 12/31/1969 but, they are just the result of a mailing list admin's broken clock, since I wasn't even born for another 9 years.
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Personal email accounts are newer (Score:2)
Yeah, but many of us old geezers who've had work or university email since the 70s didn't get personal email until the 90s, when we were buying our own internet connectivity instead of dialing into work. Does "rms@fsf.org" or "rms@various.things.mit.edu" count as a personal email account?
It also depends a lot on when we got PCs at home - it really didn't make sense for me to buy one of my own as opposed to using a dumb terminal to dial into the Unix machine at work which had Usenet on it (or later, a work
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I was reckoning accounts such as rms@mit.edu as a personal account, as it was specific to a person. Maybe that's not the intention of the poll question, but you know how slashdot polls are... This would be in opposition to, say, taocp@cs.stanford.edu [stanford.edu]: Don Knuth dropped his personal email address in 1990, but one may still reach him by email, if the content is appropriate. In my own case, I calculated that I got a personal email address around 1997, although my family had an email address through compuser
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I find it interesting that the 40-60% group is so big. My hypothesis is that over time people have started to get email accounts earlier, so it'll stay around no matter what the person's age.
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Not really there are a bunch of variables
Most people started to get email addresses in the mid 90's (so 15 year gap)
People in their 30's will be at their 1/2 of their life mark.
But assume that parents will give their kids access to an email account when they are say 12. They could be in their early 20's and be around half too.
Lets say they got their email address at 8 then they will be a teenager to meet the 1/2 life mark.
Just by doing these calculations you have 3 key distinct demographic ranges Teens, Ea
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Yeah, I would just ask. ./ers ages from their UID (a bad idea).
In fact I did just that once after a discussion about trying divine
I made a chart of age vs. UID to show how bad the correlation is.
I had a very small sample but it showed a negative correlation though it was close enough to zero to show that it didn't mean anything.
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Re:gee, a sneaky way to get the average /.ers age (Score:4, Funny)
No, the question would be "how many years has it been since you moved out of your parent's basement?"
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I'm 36, so my average age (measured over my lifetime) would be 18. But never mind ;-)
Average can be so misleading as a statistic; what's your median age?
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1) Sum total of all your ages: n(n+1)/2 = 36*37/2 = 666
2) Divided by the number of years: 666/36 = 18.5
Also, you might be the Antichrist what with the 666 and all, so you might want to get that checked. =)
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Which gives us a maximum sign-up age of 7... did I get the Math wrong?
No, the math is right for somebody signed up for e-mail in 1981. I expect it wasn't until the mid 90s that kids had email addresses at younger ages, though. So, if a parent gave their kid their own account at, say, age 3, they would have had email for 81% of their life.
These days, I don't doubt that millions of parents register email accounts before age 1, just on general principles: birth certificate, check; social security number, check; e-mail account, check.
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These days, I don't doubt that millions of parents register email accounts before age 1, just on general principles: birth certificate, check; social security number, check; e-mail account, check.
Facebook account, check.
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I got my own membership/account to Washington Apple Pi for my 6th birthday (my father was also a member).. I'm 34 now, I'm sure there are similar geeky supportive-parents stories out there.
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Got mine in 1981 as an 8 year old through the community education program (after school programming courses) at the local university. 7 would have certainly been a statistical outlier of at the time, but I'm sure there were some.
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I'm so old that the only spam I had to deal with at one point in my life, was the spam sandwiches my mom used to make me.