If you're in your 20s, it might be difficult to imagine, but there was a time when there was no web to browse, no Internet to access, and when few people outside of an academic setting had an email address.
This was in the early 1990s.
By the mid-90s, the internet was becoming available to the general public. There was a lot of buzz about it. On late night TV in 1995, David Letterman famously asked Microsoft founder Bill Gates about "https://youtu.be/rsvuQlyrfy0?t=3m5s" target="_blank">this internet thing."
"What the hell is it, anyway?" Letterman asked.
In Microsoft's backyard, the Seattle Public Library was the first major library in the country to get connected to the Internet. One thing librarians and others working to teach people how to use the new technology noticed right away was that a lot of people standing in line to get online were homeless.
These "homeless hackers," as a newspaper article at the time dubbed them, were more than willing to help others get on the new "information superhighway."
