Why my job is still cool

It's tough to write a 25-year-anniversary column when you haven't been here for 25 years – my time at the helm of the Cool Tools column has only been about 10 years or so now. Instead, I'll reflect on the past 25 years in my own life and how technology (and networking!) has changed not only what I do for work, but within my life as well.

Read Network World's 25th anniversary package

In 1986 I was in my second semester as a freshman at Syracuse University, with the intention of becoming a newspaper journalist and wowing the world with scoops and wearing a hat with a piece of paper that said "PRESS" stuck in the brim. We still used typewriters to write up our stories and papers, although I was lucky enough to own a personal computer that my father had built on his own (he was a huge technology junkie) with a connected dot-matrix printer. I spent most of my computing time playing Might and Magic and other assorted PC games, not even aware of the Internet.

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It's tough to write a 25-year-anniversary column when you haven't been here for 25 years – my time at the helm of the Cool Tools column has only been about 10 years or so now. Instead, I'll reflect on the past 25 years in my own life and how technology (and networking!) has changed not only what I do for work, but within my life as well.

Read Network World's 25th anniversary package

In 1986 I was in my second semester as a freshman at Syracuse University, with the intention of becoming a newspaper journalist and wowing the world with scoops and wearing a hat with a piece of paper that said "PRESS" stuck in the brim. We still used typewriters to write up our stories and papers, although I was lucky enough to own a personal computer that my father had built on his own (he was a huge technology junkie) with a connected dot-matrix printer. I spent most of my computing time playing Might and Magic and other assorted PC games, not even aware of the Internet.

Click to see: A younger Keith Shaw

Following graduation in 1989, I found work at a small newspaper in Southwest Florida (Go Charlotte Sun!), and the newspaper business had graduated to small, portable computers that could transmit data via the phone line into our central computer system. The newsroom acquired a small Macintosh computer for creating graphics, and since I had worked on a Mac in college, I was given the job as "graphics guy" for the staff, creating very rudimentary infographics, charts and other assorted "art".

The Internet started creeping in on my life – my father and I racked up very large bills with the Compuserve and Genie online services, and I think we paid most of them. Later at another newspaper, I became an earlier subscriber to America Online – I was able to hold onto the kshaw@aol.com e-mail address for a long time, until people started e-mailing me thinking I was the kshaw that they knew. This was also the time when my dad got a cell phone – it was one of those brick-like devices that had a battery pack you had to carry around on your shoulder.

In the mid-to-late '90s everyone started getting broadband, so I left AOL and got EarthLink DSL at one apartment, and then when I bought my house we got cable broadband, which has been upgraded several times since (hint, hint, Verizon: we're still waiting for FiOS in our neighborhood).

On the journalism front, we've seen the Internet go from a hobby to a required tool in producing content, whether it's used for research, downloading photos for articles, or uploading videos to YouTube and our own Web sites. An often-heard joke in the newsroom goes "What did we ever do before the Internet?", but you could replace "Internet" with "Facebook", "Twitter" and "YouTube" if you wanted.

Since starting at Network World, I've covered and played with home wireless gear, notebook computers, network-attached storage devices, incredibly smaller and smaller cell phones, handheld video cameras, video game systems, TVs and USB-connected doodads and gizmos. The networked world truly is upon us, as most everything that comes into my office has either its own network connection, or can connect to another device with an Internet connection.