Not unlike Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, the Internet has truly changed our world.

This newspaper (or Web site, obviously, if you’re reading this there) isn’t easily produced without the magic of the Internet.

Information flows freely from the Internet through various sources right onto these pages — be they paper or pixels.

The Internet is thrilling at times, useful mostly and a little scary for some.

But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, and all you young ones out there might flip at the revelation of this, I can remember before the Internet existed.

I first saw the Internet when I was in college.

A guy named Pascal, who worked as an illustrator at the student newspaper at the University of Southern Mississippi, called me over to show me his newest discovery.

When I walked over to Pascal’s corner, he showed me how he had wired up an internal modem that was now lying atop the small Apple Macintosh computer. Who knew an internal modem could work well from the outside?

In fact, who knew what an internal modem actually was at that point, anyway?

Pascal was proud of his new creation and anxious to show it off. I was the only one around at the moment so I was to see the debut of the Internet in the basement of USM’s Southern Hall.

Needless to say, I was less than impressed.

“So what does it do?” I asked.

“Watch this,” Pascal said, proceeding to type in this long stream of commands.

When he hit a key a directory of files popped up.

My lack of enthusiasm obviously showed because I remember his trying to enthusiastically explain that what we were looking at on the computer was information on another, larger computer across campus.

Wow. Big deal. Yeah, right.

At that point, the Internet seemed pretty lame and mostly pointless, at least for normal folks.

Flash forward 15 years or so and the Internet looks a bit different. Today, it has found a way into life, work, play, just about every possible piece of information you might need or seek to share is there.

Just as a way to test this, I decided to see if I could find people from my past by doing a bit of Googling. In no time flat I found Routh, a girl I went to high school with who now lives in New York City. A few minutes later and I found Brian, who was one of the headbangers I hung around with a bit in school. Brian’s long hair is long gone and he’s apparently banging on doors, not heads as he sells real estate in the Dallas area.

And what about Pascal? He’s still the same guy, apparently, and he’s turned his interest in the Internet into a career in Web design. His Web site shows that he lives in New York creating all kinds of cool things on the Web. No more boring text. His sites contain some serious coolness.

This newspaper’s Web site is about to have some new coolness of its own soon when we launch a new version of the site.

The site, natchezdemocrat.com, was launched in earnest in 1999 and the site’s usefulness and design has stayed relatively functional, if perhaps a bit behind the times.

We’re aiming to change that soon and roll with the technology tide a bit. In an effort to make sure our Web efforts get lots of attention, we’ve named Ben Hillyer our new Web editor. Ben’s great photography and design work is well known to many of our readers.

In his new role, Ben’s talent will shift a bit and help our staff learn how to tell stories online in the best way possible. He’ll continue to do a bit of photography and a bit of design, too. The new role will be a challenge for Ben and for the rest of our staff, too.

The new site should be fun and entertaining for readers and for our staff. I guarantee the results will be a bit more exciting that my first Internet experience so many years ago. Stay tuned, more details in the weeks ahead.

Kevin Cooper is associate publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.