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I had almost the exact same experience at about the same age (seeing Mosaic on a friends' machine, in high school) -- but came to the opposite conclusion; I kne
by sstrudeau 16y ago
I had almost the exact same experience at about the same age (seeing Mosaic on a friends' machine, in high school) -- but came to the opposite conclusion; I knew this would be hot! Having had tinkered with gopher, irc, and a little bit of text-only www, seeing the hypertextual web rendered with images blew my mind.
- tjmaxal 16y agoI remember in college how all the English professors we certain that hypertext novels with interweaving plot lines would replace the novel as we knew it. Even with the adoption of ebooks it still hasn't happened.
- neilk 16y agoEbert has a good explanation of that. In the days when people told stories around the campfire, at any time, the storyteller could have asked the audience what should happen next. But they didn't because that would have ruined the story. Douglas Coupland was more prescient in Microserfs, written about the same time. He said that interactive multimedia wouldn't be like books, it would be more like sports.
- tjmaxal 16y agoI'm a HUGE fan of Microserfs
- neilk 16y agoThe moment for me was the first time I was browsing Yahoo, back when it had a stanford.edu address. I found a webcam in a computer lab in Japan. Someone had set up some stuffed animals in front of the camera. The lab was deserted. And in the window beyond, dawn was breaking, even though it was night on the east coast of North America. That's when the world changed for me.