The youngsters of today look at the digital world as if it has always existed. To them, connectivity is like oxygen—invisible, immediate, and everywhere. They navigate the web with a casual familiarity that often overlooks the foundation underneath it. When they use the term "OG" on me, I take it as a compliment. I am an Old Gangster of the internet, simply because I was there when we had to build the roads they are now driving on.
My digital journey began in the early 1990s right here in Windhoek. Long before the World Wide Web became a household name, I connected to CompuServe using one of the very first dial-up lines provided by South West Africa Telecommunications (SWASTEL). In those days, getting online required patience and a tolerance for the high-pitched screech of a modem fighting for a connection. If you have never experienced the tension of a 9,600-baud handshake, you do not know the true historical cost of data.
My perspective expanded significantly in 1993 when I lived in Paris. Europe offered a glimpse into a more fully integrated network ecosystem, showing what was possible when infrastructure meets demand. By 1994, I moved from consuming content to creating it. I built my first website from scratch using HTML 1.0. This was a time of plain text editors, grey backgrounds, and bright blue hyperlinks, where every single layout tag had to be written and closed manually.
Commitment to the medium eventually brought wider recognition. By 2006, I was an established Google publisher, with my platform attracting over 100,000 views a month. When Facebook launched its initial global expansion, I joined the platform in 2007. Since then, the tools have changed, but the core objective of digital communication remains the same.
What usually establishes my status with the younger generation, especially the gamers, is a minor detail from the past. They often assume that digital storefronts and online purchases are recent inventions. They tend to quiet down when they discover that my very first online purchase was a copy of DOOM back in 1996. This was long before instant one-click downloads; it meant manually routing an encrypted text order form through an early web browser and waiting weeks for the registered floppy disks to arrive by mail.
I accept the title of OG because my generation did not merely inherit the internet. We witnessed its arrival, adapted to its early limitations, and helped establish the space that users take for granted today.
