The Unrecognizable Internet of 1996

by rogercosseboom • 17 years ago

21 27 17 years ago

Most people these days are lamenting about the death of innovation in the valley. It reminds me of when Arthur Rock said that innovation was dead right before the internet started taking off.

"He predicts few dramatic technological breakthroughs in the next several years, but expects that recent inventions will enable dozens of companies to push electronics into every aspect of life."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949965-1,00...

Many people copy success so tons of "me-too" companies get started, but technology just like all industries are dominated by black swans.

robotron• 17 years ago

This article is looking at the older Internet from one point of view. There was much more to it than the Web. There were thriving communities on Usenet and IRC. People had personal home pages instead of MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/Whatever accounts. You hosted your own scanned photos.

eru• 17 years ago

And MUDs!

tptacek4• 17 years ago

There were thriving Usenet and IRC communities (I miss Usenet), but you had those things on BBS's too; it wasn't really a breakthrough.

baddox2• 17 years ago

Oh, Usenet is still out there. There are even still communities, although it's mostly just used for binaries now.

joeyo• 17 years ago

IRC is most definitely still there.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

Nothing like the puzzle of collecting and putting together UUEncoded-split "warez" (invariably one or two pieces would be missing)

gb• 17 years ago

I was on CompuServe back then (95 or 96 anyway), at the time I never even opened the web browser - my time online was spent in the CompuServe app looking at the board/chatroom/portal type things that it used to serve.

Strangely I can still remember the "phone number" style email address I had too...

eleitl• 17 years ago

Articles like these makes me want to strangle the author.

No, Sir, my Indy with Ethernet and Mosaic/Netscape was quite up to the task. In fact, my telnet to the Sun and ftp and gopher pre-web was already immensely useful.

If it sucked for you 1996, maybe it was just you.

tptacek4• 17 years ago

I don't take your meaning. You think compared to what we have in 2008, the web of 1996 didn't suck? I was connected directly to the backbone (I ran an ISP), and I agree with him.

trevelyan2• 17 years ago

The web was awesome in 1996. It sucked in 1993.

By 1996 you had actual webpages you could visit. IQ tests. News sites. Hotmail. But it was still difficult to tell professional content from amateur stuff. Conspiracy theory and Internet trolling were fresh and interesting and the blink tag was in wide use. And port 80 wasn't the only game in town still: there were still lots of independent BBS that had interesting content and where TELNET was king.

So what if you weren't online all the time. The communities that existed expected asynchronous access. You could grab lots of content and download it for use offline. There were brilliant software applications and games ready for the taking: DOOM had left Wolfenstein in it's wake? Online was liberating. Online was brilliant. It still is.

trevelyan2• 17 years ago

The web was awesome in 1996. It sucked in 1993.

omouse2• 17 years ago

Web pages loaded much faster if I remember correctly. I never really got a chance to use gopher till yesterday and it is a much much faster system for looking through a university library's catalog. Fuck I hate 2009 when everything is moving to the WWW even when it doesn't belong there :(

wallflower3• 17 years ago

Trumpet Winsock!

lurkinggrue2• 17 years ago

I was on the internet in 89 and found tons of things to do:

Irc, Usenet, Mucks, Muds, Gopher, Ftp.

By 1996 we were complaining about the Aol users ruining the internet.

tptacek4• 17 years ago

In 89 you complained once every September about the students ruining the Internet; not a major change.

lurkinggrue2• 17 years ago

This is true and by 98 gave up complaining about Internet newbies.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

I remember at a young age telling my step dad that he should be buying domain names of big companies and sitting on them. he laughed at me. :(

I'm the sort of kid who was buying candy in bulk and reselling it at school for a hefty markup. I'm pissed I missed out on all the easy money in web 1.0. If only I was born 10 years earlier.

blgraves• 17 years ago

Domain Squatting is illegal and has been for about 10 years.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

If you had a time machine and wanted to make decent amounts of money, one way would be to register the generic keyword domains (like creditcards.com which sold for $3m)

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

10 years would be what? 1998-1999? I'm obviously talking about 1993-1994

tdavis• 17 years ago

In 1996 I was just starting to "code" web sites, so I found lots to do. That doesn't seem like a long time ago until I remember I was 12 at the time, but I digress.

Also, spending all evening on IRC was a common event.

omouse2• 17 years ago

Journalists shouldn't write science- or technology-related articles. Ever.

The Unrecognizable Internet of 1996

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