Chapter 4 　Birth of Setsuden-mushi (a profitmaking device) 　4.2 Setsuden-mushi's Growth Expectations and Setbacks 　4.2.6 Internet 4.2.6.1 Home Page

　It was the year 1996.

　I was looking for a way to publicize Setsuden-mushi and my own ideas about environmental awareness when I received a phone call from Mr. Ishii, the president of a local food service company in Onomichi.

　Mr. Ishii and I used to sit together in a group at the local Onomichi Chamber of Commerce and Industry to learn about computers and its use.

　He was the first person to start an Internet provider business in Onomichi, a small city with a population of less than 100,000 in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. He was the first person to establish the infrastructure of the Internet in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture.

　The content of the phone call was an invitation to come and see how the Internet was working.

　Since the call was from the person who created the first information highway infrastructure, the Internet, not only in Onomichi but also in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture, and since it was a Saturday morning, I immediately accepted the invitation and came into close contact with the Internet for the first time outside of workshops and lectures.

　I told President Ishii and his subordinate engineers again that I had a product called Setsuden-mushi. They immediately commented that Setsuden-mushi was a product with a lot of potential and that it would be a good product to sell on the Internet.

　That's it! I immediately decided to join the Internet and create a web site, and by February 1996, I was part of the Internet user population. In February 1996, I became one of the first Internet users in the world. 10 years have passed since then (at the time of writing this book), but if you do the math in dog-ears, it would be 90 or 100 years ago in the normal sense of time.

　At that time, the HTML language was too difficult for amateurs to handle, and the cost of creating a website was very expensive. It was the early days of the Internet, at least in the countryside of Onomichi City, when business success on the Internet was a hot topic.

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