CU THEN AND NOW
by Russ_UK
The following article was supposed to be about the changes I have seen
in CU-SeeMe since I first tried it back in 1995, however it turned into
a narrative of my early experiences of CU. This in itself shows many
of the changes that have taken place, and illustrates how things were
very different then than how they are today.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, well maybe June 1995 was not
quite that long ago, but it sure seems like it some times, I started a new
job on an IT Technical Support Team. A number of the people working
on the team were raving about this thing called the Internet. They were
talking a language I just did not understand, http, html, gopher, IRC,
browsing, TCP/IP, winsocks, and many other terms that were just totally
meaningless to me. I had of course heard of the Internet before then,
but it was not at that time something that ordinary people had anything to
do with.
I decided to borrow a 14,400 modem from work and opened myself an
account with an ISP. I can remember many hours of blood sweat and
tears trying to work out how to get my PC to talk to the modem, and the
modem to talk to my ISP. Everything was set up in DOS, and there were
these pages and pages of very unhelpful plain text files "Help Files" that
to be honest were of no help at all. They went on about such things as
modem scripts, Hayes AT command sets, protocol negotiations, PPP and
SLIP. Windows 95 did not yet exist, and plug and play was unheard of.
Anyway, eventually I had a working Internet connection! And what did I
find? To be honest, I was rather unimpressed. The embryonic browser
I had struggled to do anything except display text, and actually trying
to find anything of any use was not easy. A couple of months later my
PC had gained Windows 95 and things became a little easier.
Around this time, in September 1995, I was reading a PC magazine
about emerging Internet technologies. One of the features was to have a
bigger effect on me than I could ever have imagined at the time. The
article was about CU-SeeMe. It described it as being something akin to
IRC, only with video, and as with IRC it said it was probably something
you would not want your kids using unsupervised due to the possibility
of finding adult oriented content. Hmmm I thought, now this sounds like
something I need to look into.
I can remember it took me some time to locate a copy of CU-SeeMe on
the web, but I did find one. I ran the application and was presented
with a blank video screen with the user name of "Tom Servo", and a
side window that contained words like sender and lurker. It�s quite
difficult to explain what my reaction was, but I know that part of it was I
can remember thinking that I had somehow come into possession of a
piece of software that belonged to Tom Servo, I honestly thought he was
a real person.
What the hell I thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that,
so I logged on, and went in search of somewhere to connect to. This
turned out to be a much more difficult task than I imagined. After several
hours, or maybe it was even several days of looking, I found a few short
text file lists of CU-SeeMe reflectors. However, just about every one I
tried to connect up to seemed to no longer exist.
Eventually, I found a few reflectors that were active. These were
however empty. I tried again on and off over the next few days, until
eventually I connected to a reflector that had some people in it. I can
remember being more than a little worried when suddenly my screen was
filled with five or six blank windows, and each of these windows had a
name, and one of these names was Tom Servo! I immediately left.
Curiosity got the better of me the following day, so I went back to the
same place. What did I find this time? More blank windows filling my
screen, and two of these were Tom Servo. Ahh... went my brain, s
omething strange here... and eventually the lightbulb went on. There has
to be a way of changing the user name, and indeed there was. On that
day "Russ" was born.
I reconnected to the same reflector, now proudly knowing that Tom Servo
was not a real person, and knowing that I had managed to work out how to
change my user name and they hadn�t.
I opened a couple of the windows. Gradually the pixels in one of the
windows started to form in an image� and what did I see? Well, I wasn�t
sure initially, but after a few seconds I realised I was looking at a naked
guy!.. I tried another window, another naked guy... Hmmm I thought, let's
try one more, you guessed it, another black and white very pixelated
naked guy.
My initial venture into the world of CU continued for a few more weeks,
during which time I became increasingly frustrated at the fact that there
was no real way to talk effectively. Chat was typed into the video window,
one or two words at a time, and then you had to wait for the image to form
a few pixels at a time. Eventually I just gave up, and thus ended my first
adventures into the word of CU.
About six months later in about April 1996 I tried again. Things had
changed dramatically. I found a new version of Cu-SeeMe, and this one
had a chat window! I had a faster 28,000 modem that had cost me a
fortune , a faster PC, and a new ISP. So I thought let�s give this another
go.
This time I found things a little better. Reflectors were still difficult to
find, but at least a few more of them seemed to be active. I wandered
around as many reflectors as I could find on and off for a month or so
just watching the chat, although I must admit that there was generally
not a lot of chat to watch. I was also learning the terminology, BRB?
WB? AFK? LOL? What did these things mean?? Having never really
ventured into the world of IRC I really was pretty clueless. One feeling I
remember distinctly was the feeling of nervousness whenever I entered
a new ref. I really did not know if I was allowed to be there or not and so
made sure that I was on my best behaviour. I distinctly remember the
day I first found a reflector called IBM. I had been watching the chat at
another ref, when I saw two people talking about different reflectors they
knew, one of then said "Have you been to IBM?" and the conversation
went on about what a great place it was. Someone else asked what the
IP address was, and it was given to him. I wrote it down too. Little did I
know how much that chance observation was to change the rest of my
online life.
I added IBM into my address book, and off I went... "Reflector Full"...
Huh?? What�s this? I tried again, and again, and again... after about
35 tries I eventualy got onto the ref and got the message "The IBM
Global Community Reflector" It sounded SO serious! It was packed.
15 seats - 10 senders, 5 lurkers, of which I was one. And what was going
on?? People were actually talking to each other! Or more specifically,
they were talking to a lady named Lucy. I opened Lucy�s vid... and
there was this rather stunning (if rather pixelated and headless) woman
sitting there in her underwear! WOW! Hey, I think I like this place
already I thought. When I joined the ref, Lucy was actually just saying her
goodbyes, but the strangest thing then happened after she left. The ref
did not empty out, people stayed and talked, about just about anything.
An hour later my connection to the ref timed out. Could I get back in?
Not a chance.
Over the next week or so I returned to IBM as many times as I could.
Gradually I learned more about the place. It was run on the Desktop
work PC of "Slipknot". It had at least two conferences, a G rated conf, and
an anything goes conf, there were rumours of other hidden confs too.
There were several people who seemed to be there all the time, and
gradually I got to know them. Some of these people are still amongst
my closest CU friends in the world today. I didn�t see Lucy again for
several weeks, in fact it was quite rare for there to be any women present
as there were far fewer women on CU at that time. However this just did
not matter, as the place was still worth visiting to sit and talk. Everyone
there was new to CU, probably because CU was still quite new in itself.
If you sat there every evening for a week then you would see most of the
CU Community of the world pass through to say hello.
About a month later, I met Lady Xeen at IBM, and shortly afterwards I
found out how Americans really celebrate the 4Th July <GRIN> That was
it... I had to get a camera! When I got paid at the end of the month I went
out and bought a black and white Connectix Quickcam and joined the world
of senders. At about this time another Russ started appearing on the ref,
and after there being some confusion about who was saying what, I
modified my nickname to Russ_UK, and have been known as that ever
since.
IBM taught me more than I can possibly say here. I learned the unwritten
rules, it had a sense of community the likes of which I still have not seen
repeated. Just simple things, if a lady had the floor then she was not to
be interrupted, people froze their video send to free up bandwidth for her.
Did that ever work? I doubt it, but it did not matter, it was the polite and
right thing to do at the time. As there were so few women on CU at that
time, the ladies were always made to feel especially welcome when they
did arrive on the ref. When there were no ladies present the regulars t
alked to each other, guys opened other guy�s video without fearing that
they would be accused of being gay. Everyone was welcomed. If anyone
got out of hand they were dealt with by the group. Peer pressure was a
powerful thing. Refmons did not exist at that time, and the reflector
owner, Slipknot was rarely if ever there. This meant that the ref was in
effect self-governing. No one decided what was or was not allowed, it
just depended on the group as a whole as to what was the right thing at
that time. If someone did not get the message that their behaviour was
not acceptable to the group then the last resort was a "mass ping".
Everyone on the ref would ping the offender�s IP address, eventually
causing their connection to time out. Even this action was a group thing
as no one individual could achieve the required result on their own.
Sadly however, all good things come to an end, and before the end of the
year, IBM ceased to exist. Despite the efforts of the group to find a new
home, it just did not happen. The group fragmented across a number of
public and private reflectors.
