By DAVE WARGO

tneditor@tnonline.comSocial media has made such an impact on our lives since the explosion and widespread casual use of the Internet in the past 20 years. It is hard to believe the evolution and changes that have occurred since I first had my own Internet hookup in 1995. Basically one could send e-mail over the Internet and browse some university archives of files for various information in those early days of the Internet.I remember search engines like Archie and Gopher were used to obtain information while the browser was not of much use initially. My first Prolog hookup had six programs, an email program whose name I cannot recall, search engines like Gopher and Archie, and a web browser named Mosaic.Before this we used modems (remember those) to dial up to bulletin boards, and the sum total of social media were the different "boards" on which one could post messages. One could download, read and respond to them daily.I can remember dialing into a local BBS and downloading my digest at night because it would take 2 or 3 hours at 2400 bits per second to download the messages. There were no photographs or music, just text. Well there were photographs which were translated into text, which you would download, and in essence recompile.It was the Stone Age of technology. People took their time. Most people could care less about computers or "cyberspace" 20 years ago. The explosion of the World Wide Web in the late 1990s changed all of that. I remember the first time I found eBay.It was a really cool site and I could sell old stuff I had lying around for a few bucks. I remember the first chat programs like IRC and MSN messenger and Yahoo. It was neat to be able to talk to each other with a few-second delay like ham radio operators.Photographs could be sent at that point without having to interpret data manually because Internet programs were becoming more sophisticated, but still most folks over the age of 30 probably were not using computers extensively during leisure.Along came Amazon and buying books, and soon almost everything else became easier and cheaper. Brick-and-mortar stores found themselves in competition with a digital storefront, and it has been a fierce competitor ever since.The next big innovations that really defined our world today were not related but coincidental. The advent and marketing genius of Facebook coupled with mobile devices has revolutionized our world. Messages that took hours to transmit among hobbyists now transmit to the entire planet in seconds.We use Facebook to keep track of our friends and family. We use it to make statements and prove points. We use it to comfort, cajole, annoy, insult, remember and share joy or sorrows with our circles of family and friends. And there is no end in sight.The downside is we have also willingly given up our privacy in a big way by posting statuses, locations, photographs and such online. This is a hotbed of information for criminals. We should use more care in such activities and thoughts. Take advantage of privacy settings and make sure you don't innocently set yourself up as a victim because of your openness to the world.Unfortunately, we have also managed to lose some basic skills, and I am guilty as well. We no longer write letters, wait for mail or send cards because we have become a society of last-minute thoughts and spur-of-the-moment status updates. This furious pace of technology can burn one out if we are not careful. Sometimes the good old days seem almost comforting and relaxing, down by the old mill stream.Oh, hold on, I should post that as my status. I'll be back.