Tech Tidbit of the Day

Have you ever wondered what the very first transaction to be completed over the internet was? Let’s have a few guesses – Was it a computer and pleasantly ironic? Was it diamonds? A big old rusty boat? Camera equipment? Dirty magazines?

Nope, guess again. Well, no, you don’t have to, because we’re about to tell you. It was weed. It was definitely marijuana.

Straight from the sauce –  John Markoff ‘s 2005 book ‘What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry’:

“In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana.”

Go technology! Gettin’ people high since 1971.