#tbt: Lev Introduces Internet Without Cords

Leverett House reopened today for its residents after undergoing massive renovations this past year. It wasn’t so long ago, though, that Leverett House underwent changes of a different variety. Back in the fall of 2002, Lev was the first Harvard house to offer its residents wireless internet. (Hey, ‘90s kids, remember when you needed cords and plugs to “surf the net”? Remember when people still called it “surfing the net”?)

Upon moving in, students were surprised to find that wireless Ethernet had been installed in all Lev common spaces. Beat that, Stanford. To get unlimited access to MSN, AOL, and so much more (read: porn) from the comfort of any common area, students needed to pony up a mere $100. Back then, $100 was worth $1,000,000 of today’s dollars, and Wikipedia didn’t exist to help fact-check that math. (We just checked Wikipedia, and one of those two statements is definitely true.)

Not all students were so keen on the wireless deal.

“Buying a wireless card is not really worth it,” said Donald W. Van Valkenburgh ’03, Leverett resident and self-anointed predictor of trends.

Others, however, were more optimistic about “the Internet.”

“Going wireless is one of our highest priorities,” said Kevin S. Davis ’98, Coordinator of Residential Computing at Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS). And if it hadn’t been for forward-thinking guys like Davis, Mark Zuckerberg might never have been able to invent Facemash from the comfort of his Kirkland dorm room just a little more than a year later. Then again, maybe he was still using dial up.

This #tbt was posted from the land of wireless internet.