1989 the World Wide Web was born on this date. And what a change it has brought on the world and those seeking the truth about Mormonism.

I was an early adopter so I officially went online with Prodigy in 1991. It was a dial up connection, of course, and didn't connect to the www until 1994. Prodigy had bulletin boards that covered just about any subject and that included Mormonism. I was a poster on that board and was still sitting on the fence. I had a lot of questions but the online resources just weren't available then so I had to direct my questions to the BB. There were both defenders of the faith and detractors, both of which posted arguments along with citations. I then had to manually locate these references, mostly in church libraries. That wasn't an easy task but I was surprised to find that most could be located in an official TSCC buildings which made questioning the veracity of those records pretty difficult. Some records were only available to temple recommend holding members and were marked "restricted," which alone I found troubling. Being a recommend holder, I was able to get most of what I was looking for and created quite a reference book with a lot of the troubling documents. It wasn't too long before someone got suspicious of me looking at these obscure documents and books and I was called in by my bishop and asked about my interest in church records. I stood my ground as someone just interested in church history and genealogy and didn't tip my hand about the doubts I was putting on my shelf. (Imagine your bishop looking at your browser history to get an idea of what it was like for me.) It wasn't too long before the libraries were cleaned up and "restricted records" disappeared from the library catalogs. It's often suggested that TSCC has been slow to respond to the threat the internet would present, but they did react early on to hide original reference material. They couldn't imagine (nor could anyone else for that matter) what it would grow into and how that would affect the members. And they had a prophet and seer!

Those of you out there now with questions probably don't know how easy you have it with information available in an instant instead of spending hours and even days looking for something now found in a couple of seconds. There was no RfM, no mormonthink, and certainly no CES letter, to turn to. And only a few people on an obscure bulletin board where you could ask difficult questions.

Thanks RfM and other trail blazers for all you have done from those early days and what you continue to do every day. I raise my glass to you and to further success in the next 25 years and beyond!

Sorry John but you were not on the INTERNET. You were only on the INTERNET if you were on AOL. LMAO at how primitive things were back then.

I remember by tech savy BIL explaining to the family that AOL was not the Internet. That just shows how stupid he was for not going to church.

I'm sorry, I thought I made that clear. I was on a bulletin board on Prodigy. Later in the 1990's I connected to the broader WWW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

I guess my point was how difficult it was before this time to get primary source documents. Before that time, it was easier to discount anything that showed TSCC in a bad light as "anti." The WWW, and intranets, have changed all of that.

Amazing...maybe time to change from BC and AD to BWWW and AWWW (before world wide web and after www).

Ron Burr

You know, I think I agree with you in a very serious way. This is a huge shift for humanity. But I think BWWW and AWWW are awkward. Maybe BIA and AIA (Before/After Information Age).

the WWW's birthday if it weren't for you. My story of discovering the truth about Mormonism with Prodigy is similar.

I posted your comments at the Internet section of the Salamander to add perspective to the process we are all in.

http://www.salamandersociety.com/internet/

For example her is a post Eric Kettunen, the founder of Recovery From Mormonism wrote back in 2005 which I archived at the Salamander.

10 Years of Recovery from Mormonism

11/18/2005 - Eric Kettunen

It was 10 years ago next week, during Thanksgiving in the US, that I put up a first page and typed "Recovery from Mormonism". It was on an ISP in Chattanooga, TN and was a personal web page before registering exmormon.org a few months later. The site was originally designed to last a year to pay forward those that had helped me recover from my Mormon experience. I never anticipated 10 years.

There have been and continue to be many volunteers who help behind the scenes to keep this running. It is because of them the site is still online. The Exmormon Foundation is an outgrowth of ex-Mormons' desires to help others out of the corporation.

I just had another interview with a newspaper doing an article on Mormonism. It is odd to me that such a small experiment changed my life. I am a quiet individual living in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains with a web site that has now become a collaborative effort which has reached thousands around the world. Who could of ever imagined?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2014 10:49PM by cricket.

It is interesting how far we've come and how much the world has changed in 25 years. I reread my post and it reminded me of my grandfather telling me stories about having no cars, the Great Depression, the World Wars, etc. It's hard to believe that I'm that old dude saying, "When I was your age...," and hell, I haven't even hit 50 yet!

I'm mid thirties and I have these stories for my kids. I was at a thrift store the other day and my seven year old picked up a record. "Mom! What is this suppose to be, a CD?"

It was a weird feeling.

Boy, does that bring back memories of true phone modems (where you would put the actual telephone receiver on the modem block) and 20 MEGABYTE hard drives costing over $400!

Haha!

We left the church last year because I had a question about D&C 49:16 during Gospel Doctrine class so I pulled out my IPAD! I got my answer the church wasn't true right during church (well, the start of it anyway).

All because of the internet! Happy birthday and THANK YOU!!!

here is an example of an exmormon message board on Prodigy:

http://1857massacre.com/MMM/mormon_thought_police.htm

I remember several of those regular posters. We even had a friendly board meet-up in Provo in '95ish.

You can see from reading the posts how far we've come. Wow.

I was 110% "all in" in 2011. I was serving in a bishopric. I googled a particular quote from a prophet (in response to a question that a member of the ward had for me). In doing this, I ran into the word "polyandry." I had never heard this word before. I was completely clueless as to how this may be related to Joseph Smith. I spent almost all night researching JS's polygamy/polyandry.

The two primary questions that came out of this experience were:
1) What else am I unaware of?
2) Why am I just now finding out about this?

And now I'm here.

I think I just felt the spirit. I know because I felt this rush of emotion to think of the valiant spirits that were reseved for this time to bring forth the truth.

On a more serious note, as I read your post, I imagined all the souls that felt so alone with their questions and how brave and determined they were to research the old fashion way. How grateful I am for the work and efforts of those who were not afraid to ask, especially before the Internet. It must have taken a long time.

And similiar to AnonAbdulJabbar, I was searching for who's idea it was for members to clean the buildings. Found things I didn't now, and my questions were what else is the church hiding and why I am learning from it from the so feared anti-mormons?

Thank you John Ferrier for posting this and for being a true pioneer.

Cheers!

I remember dating a guy around that time who took great care to explain to me that the WWW and the internet are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

I know, right? We use those terms interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

From Wikipedia: "The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve several billion users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW), the infrastructure to support email, and peer-to-peer networks."

TL;DR: The www is just one small part of the Internet.

Doesn't anyone remember Compuserve? I was on that in 1985 with a commodore64 and a modem.

I remember HEARING about the Internet and totally ignoring it. Why would I need this computer-geeky nerd thing?

The church thrived on libraries because what goof-off teenager or dude in his twenties is going to search the stacks AFTER he has already accepted the Adam-God doctrine?

This marvelous age has truly liberated us. We get exactly the information we need in a split second. It's amazing.

It was in 1994 when an intern coworker of mine returned from the university library empty-handed after he had spent the morning researching for his masters thesis. He went on the work desktop and printed up everything he needed in about 30 minutes. And this was with a dial-up modem. I knew right then that this thing called the internet was going to change everything.

My SIL, TO THIS DAY, is so proud of the fact that she can go online to find any information she needs, but in the very same sentence says that she never uses the internet. Because the internet is evil.