Forty years online
I first touched a computer in anger in 1982. Four decades of modems, machine rooms and networks later, here's the short version.
I started in IT in 1982. By 1985 I was running the fidonet.org gateway, hauling email and echomail across the Atlantic for the UK's bulletin board scene — store-and-forward networking over late-night modem calls, back when 'online' was something you did in bursts.
Then came Demon Internet and the tenner-a-month revolution. Then real-money trading systems at Interactive Investor. Then fourteen data centres in nine countries at Redbus. Then, in 2001, my own ISP — Fido.Net — which I grew from fewer than twenty customers to thousands before selling it in 2019.
I tried retirement. Bought a boat, started a YouTube channel. It didn't take: these days it's FXRM running UK-owned hosting and shipping tools like DMARC Sentinel, and Amperlo — an app giving EV drivers honest numbers about what their car really costs.
The full timeline is here. The lesson of all of it, if there is one: the technology keeps changing, but the job — keep the packets flowing, don't lose anyone's data, answer the phone — never really has.