My own computer wasn’€™t connected to the Internet, but the father of a friend of mine had a cousin who told him that the World Wide Web was not to be missed. At my friend’s house, we typed in his father’€™s cousin’€™s access phone number. After a few seconds, we heard the birdsong of the telephone modem, followed by a deep growling and crackling. So this is what the Internet sounded like.

We asked Altavista about quantum mechanics, Batman, Vladimir Nabokov. If you searched for Mozart, you got more than a thousand results. We were amazed. Who had written all this? Who had the time to read it? And then, to my own surprise, I typed my name.

Now searching for your own name online is a modern neurosis. Everyone talks about how they can’€™t help self-googling. We’€™re supposed to say we never do it any more -€” which is rarely true. We’ve all discovered that we were more narcissistic than we’d ever imagined; we’ve learned to live in the company of our distorted Internet twins. I got the first eerie glimpse of mine back in 1997, when it all still seemed like innocent fun.