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Reading this today on Firefox on a laptop running Linux. 22 years ago (when using the internet for the first time) it would have been on Netscape running on a

Reading this today on Firefox on a laptop running Linux. 22 years ago (when using the internet for the first time) it would have been on Netscape running on a green screen Unix terminal in university lab. I used my first credit card to buy a CD from Amazon in the US. Never thought it would work. But then 2 weeks later a brown box arrived in my halls of residence in London and... well that really did change the world. Not the CD, the browser. A lot has changed. It has been very incremental and lots of stop-starts, and there have been many pains (supporting standards) but it feels like yesterday. Nice to take stock and look back.

dbcurtis 8y ago
Ha ha, very similar story. I was working with one of the guys that I managed, and he showed me a book relevant to our project that I decided I needed to buy. “Darn, can’t get away at lunch today to hit the bookstore.” He says: “Order it from Amazon.” so I say: “What is Amazon?” him: “It’s a web store. Here is the URL.” me: “I don’t have a web browser”. Him: “ftp the tarball for Mosaic from NCSA and do the standard ./configure; make all; and you will be good to go.” Here is the thing that really impresses me about Bezos. In a world where Sili Valley engineers were spreading Mosaic by word of mouth and just getting to about 50% penetration among engineers, Amazon was already a store.
Jaruzel 8y ago
What was on the CD ?