Message
A Triangle-person is jumping off a stool, excited, while their tablet device is ringing and showing “1 new”. Above them there is a thought bubble, which shows a similar situation, except instead of a tablet there is an old-style PC. The PC is a big clunker, with CRT monitor and a modem hooked up. The screen shows “1 new email”.
Subtitle: “30 years on, and I’m still excited to receive a message online.”
I remember my first email account - I was sitting there, clicking “Check mail”, willing for someone to send me a message. Even spam! But invariably there would be nothing there.
Then IRC became all the rage and suddenly there would be SO, MANY, MESSAGES! I’d login every evening for a couple of hours - I can’t even recall what the messages were but it felt fun.
After that came the era of text messages which felt cool on a whole new level - who wouldn’t want to receive messages while out and about? We couldn’t afford too many of these, so people instead used the weird web portals to try to send these.
Finally - the era of ubiquitous connectivity. Hacking university computers to get ICQ going, neverending updates to Gadu-Gadu status lines, and Skype. Finally the Cambrian Explosion: at least half a dozen communicators on my phone.