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[CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet

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From the «Veronica sexier than Archie» department:
Title: 10 Things I Remember About the First Time I Used the Web
Author: Harry McCracken
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:32:57 -0400
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/timeblogs/nerd_world/~3/zQen7WnMz-E/
Podcast Download URL: http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/d00b8afbf4bba3a317a55a6b0fae46e3?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96

As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web today[1], I’d like
to say that I was smart enough to get on the web the moment that it was
possible to do so — which, if you weren’t one of Tim Berners-Lee’s colleagues
at CERN, was in August, 1991. But in truth, I was a latecomer, relatively
speaking. I didn’t surf the web until the fall of 1994, whereupon I
immediately felt embarrassed for not having latched onto it earlier.

Once I experienced it for myself, it made quite an impression. I remember
virtually everything about that first browsing session — why it happened,
what I did, even the conference room I was sitting in and the orientation of
my chair.

Would you mind if I got nostalgic for a moment? Or 10 moments, to be precise?

1. I was already an old pro at going online. I started dialing into online
services in either 1978 or early 1979, via a roaring 300-bits-per-second
modem which you connected to the phone line by sticking the handset into a
couple of foam cups[2]. Among the services I used early on were CBBS[3] (the
first bulletin board system) and the Source[4] (the first online service
targeting only consumers). I also belonged to CompuServe, GEnie, AOL and BIX
— maybe all four at the same time at one point.

2. I knew about the Internet long before I used it. My father worked at
Boston University, and had access to the service back when it was known as
ARPANET[5] and available only to government employees and academics. He raved
about it. I’m not sure why I didn’t beg him to give me a tour.

3. I remember the first time I heard about the World Wide Web. It was no
later than mid-1993, I think. My friend Bob Stepno[6], a more forward-looking
individual than myself, told me about it and described it as “point-and-click
Internet.” Again, I was intrigued but did not take any action to try it.

4. I remember what I was doing on the Internet before I used the web. I was
sending e-mail to people on other online services, for one thing — and yes,
there was an era when that was hot stuff. I also used information retrieval
services such as Gopher[7], Archie[8] and Veronica[9], all of which seemed
exciting at the time.

5. I remember why I tried the web. I’d just started working at PC World
magazine in Boston, and my boss, Eric Bender[10], thought we should know
about this stuff. (I believe that PCW was already working on launching its
own site.)

6. I remember who showed me the web. Pete Loshin, the guy who Eric hired to
do a little workshop for us. He’s still teaching people about technology[11].

7. I remember which browser I used.NCSA Mosaic[12], of course — the
definitive web browser until Netscape Navigator, which was just coming out in
beta, displaced it shortly thereafter.

8. I remember the first site I tried. Yahoo! Pete explained to me that it
made it very easy to find stuff on almost any topic, just by typing in a
quick search. The site was roughly 10 months old at the time, and was not yet
a full-fledged company.

9. I remember the first thing I did. I searched for Krazy Kat, one of my
favorite comic strips. I don’t remember how many results popped up — it might
have been as few as ten or so — but I was dazzled. (Today, the same query on
Yahoo gets you 258,000 results[13].)

10. I remember what I did next. I signed up with an early ISP — I’m pretty
sure it was PSINet, although I jumped around a lot for a while, and sometimes
had more than one account at a time — and never looked back.

So what are your earliest memories of the web?
[image 14][image 15]

Links:
[1]: http://time.com/21039/tim-berners-lee-web-proposal-at-25/ (link)
[2]: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mwkw6UGwalI/Uhg_Uj6LQPI/AAAAAAAABZU/mniY4XJj1uc/s640/Acoustic-Coupler1.jpg (link)
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBBS (link)
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(online_service) (link)
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET (link)
[6]: https://www.twitter.com/bobstep (link)
[7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) (link)
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_search_engine (link)
[9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_(search_engine) (link)
[10]: https://www.twitter.com/ebender00 (link)
[11]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Apeter+loshin&keywords=peter+loshin&ie=UTF8&qid=1394656116 (link)
[12]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser) (link)
[13]: https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Ahd6TBjf5pZKe4JdCkZ9wT7O2FxH?toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-hrtab-901&p=%22krazy+kat%22 (link)
[14]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=time.com&blog=1359921&post=21867&subd=timedotcom&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[15]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/timeblogs/nerd_world/~4/zQen7WnMz-E (image)

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[CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-13 09:13 +0000
  Re: [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2014-03-13 22:49 -0700
    Re: [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet Tim Watts <tw_usenet@dionic.net> - 2014-03-14 09:56 +0000
      Re: [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-03-14 22:04 +0000
        Re: [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2014-03-14 22:52 +0000
    Re: [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2014-03-14 13:45 +0000

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