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1990. Not very many people had even heard of it. Some of us who'd gotten tired of wardialing and Telenet/Tymnet might have had friends in local universities who

1990. Not very many people had even heard of it. Some of us who'd gotten tired of wardialing and Telenet/Tymnet might have had friends in local universities who clued us in with our first hacked accounts, usually accessed by first dialing into university DECServers or X.25 networks. Overseas links from NSFNet could be as slow as 128kbit and you were encouraged to curtail your anonymous FTP use accordingly. Yes you could chat and play MUDs, but you could also hack so many different things. And admins were often relatively cool as long as you didn't use their machines as staging points to hack more things. If you got your hands on an outdial modem or x.25 gateway, you were sitting pretty sweet (until someone examined the bill and kicked you out). It really helped to be conversant in not just Unix, but also VMS, IBM VM/CMS, and maybe even Primenet. When Phrack came out, you immediately read it and removed it from your mail spool, not just because it was enormous, but because admins would see it and label you a troublemaker. We knew what the future was, but it was largely a secret. We learned Unix from library books and honed skills on hacked accounts, without any ethical issue because we honestly felt we were preparing ourselves and others for a future where this kind of thing should be available to everyone. We just didn't foresee it being wirelessly available at McDonalds, for free. That part still surprises me.

ianai 8y ago
Good point on free wireless being surprising. Actually, the relative cruddiness of google searches surprises me. I remember the days of searching 3+ search engines and cross compiling bookmark lists. It took a while. Sometimes you would find very nicely combined information and links in a website and learn a lot. Now it’s more like every search has been spammed with SEO’d posts in search of traffic and ad revenue. If your search is too unique or just too nuanced from an SEO’d search your search will be effectively worthless. Google might even be incentivized to mute your search. Product life cycles seem to be more fickle. You used to be able to find a year or two older model for cheaper. Now, new models effectively replace old models. Actually, online stores feel very concentrated.
walshemj 8y ago
That's the first mention I have seen on HN of primenet :-) I used to work for the UK tymnet system (80:BTG174) and Logging on from home via a 110 baud text portable terminal to kick off a map reduce billing run on all the Telecom Gold (tymnet) 15 or 16 Primes was interesting.
mehrdadn 8y ago
What do you see as the future ~20 years from now?
- justanother 8y ago
  A few years back, I once mused to friends: What happened to the hackers and revolutionaries, the teenage determination to liberate technology at all cost, writing cool text-philes along the way? A friend's answer has stuck with me ever since: "I think that says more about you than the disappearing hackers." I knew he was right: My attitude has a lot to do with how I handle the present and future. Indeed, at the smallest conferences (small-town B-Sides, 2600 meetings, even Apple II KansasFest and so forth, definitely not Defcon), I can still catch a glimpse of that gritty excitement to which I was literally addicted, night and day. To stay up all night discovering, hacking, and plotting to use the new knowledge to build a more democratic knowledge-centered world. I mention this because so far, the future seems to involve more DRM and paywalls, less neutrality, more megabytes of poorly-written crappy Javascript. And if you let that line of thinking get to you, you just feel like tossing your iPad in the trash and going hiking. At least then, you don't have to read all those dumb Alex Jones forwards from your crazy aunt. But it doesn't have to be that way. The re-decentralization movement is slowly gaining mindshare. What happens in 2040 depends 100% on how we act now. The great utopian sharing mindspace that we wrote about endlessly in Mondo 2000 (or Computer Lib / Machine Dreams) can still happen if we want.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bane 8y ago
    When I think of what I wanted the internet to become, HN, Wikipedia, github and Archive.org spring very heavily to mind. I think it's easy to lose site of the fact that the "old" internet is still there, there's just so many new layers of people and layers of things on top of it that it's hard to remember that you can still setup a /~bane/ website pretty trivially...lots of other services could still exist but nobody wants to foot the bill. I think one of the best representations of the old internet is how the demoscene operates. Free, volunteer, information rich, a bit quirky and communal.
gonzo 8y ago
> We just didn’t foresee it being wirelessly available at McDonalds, for free. Sorry about that.
ngcc_hk 8y ago
Still remember need to send in an expert to explain what is internet. Then we use it the admin people look at the charge so low and ask why this international fax is so cheap. In any case they said please ask your supervisor to authorise each connection in writing by filling form no xyZ! Have to explain and fight a bit. The case is really settled down only because it is so cheap. Not because they understand it. Or us.
fatnoah 8y ago
I remember servers being relatively open, i.e. "we just got some new Alphas, we'll give you an account to check it out".

ianai 8y ago

Good point on free wireless being surprising. Actually, the relative cruddiness of google searches surprises me. I remember the days of searching 3+ search engines and cross compiling bookmark lists. It took a while. Sometimes you would find very nicely combined information and links in a website and learn a lot. Now it’s more like every search has been spammed with SEO’d posts in search of traffic and ad revenue. If your search is too unique or just too nuanced from an SEO’d search your search will be effectively worthless. Google might even be incentivized to mute your search. Product life cycles seem to be more fickle. You used to be able to find a year or two older model for cheaper. Now, new models effectively replace old models. Actually, online stores feel very concentrated.

walshemj 8y ago

That's the first mention I have seen on HN of primenet :-) I used to work for the UK tymnet system (80:BTG174) and Logging on from home via a 110 baud text portable terminal to kick off a map reduce billing run on all the Telecom Gold (tymnet) 15 or 16 Primes was interesting.

mehrdadn 8y ago

What do you see as the future ~20 years from now?

justanother 8y ago
A few years back, I once mused to friends: What happened to the hackers and revolutionaries, the teenage determination to liberate technology at all cost, writing cool text-philes along the way? A friend's answer has stuck with me ever since: "I think that says more about you than the disappearing hackers." I knew he was right: My attitude has a lot to do with how I handle the present and future. Indeed, at the smallest conferences (small-town B-Sides, 2600 meetings, even Apple II KansasFest and so forth, definitely not Defcon), I can still catch a glimpse of that gritty excitement to which I was literally addicted, night and day. To stay up all night discovering, hacking, and plotting to use the new knowledge to build a more democratic knowledge-centered world. I mention this because so far, the future seems to involve more DRM and paywalls, less neutrality, more megabytes of poorly-written crappy Javascript. And if you let that line of thinking get to you, you just feel like tossing your iPad in the trash and going hiking. At least then, you don't have to read all those dumb Alex Jones forwards from your crazy aunt. But it doesn't have to be that way. The re-decentralization movement is slowly gaining mindshare. What happens in 2040 depends 100% on how we act now. The great utopian sharing mindspace that we wrote about endlessly in Mondo 2000 (or Computer Lib / Machine Dreams) can still happen if we want.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bane 8y ago
  When I think of what I wanted the internet to become, HN, Wikipedia, github and Archive.org spring very heavily to mind. I think it's easy to lose site of the fact that the "old" internet is still there, there's just so many new layers of people and layers of things on top of it that it's hard to remember that you can still setup a /~bane/ website pretty trivially...lots of other services could still exist but nobody wants to foot the bill. I think one of the best representations of the old internet is how the demoscene operates. Free, volunteer, information rich, a bit quirky and communal.

gonzo 8y ago

> We just didn’t foresee it being wirelessly available at McDonalds, for free. Sorry about that.

ngcc_hk 8y ago

Still remember need to send in an expert to explain what is internet. Then we use it the admin people look at the charge so low and ask why this international fax is so cheap. In any case they said please ask your supervisor to authorise each connection in writing by filling form no xyZ! Have to explain and fight a bit. The case is really settled down only because it is so cheap. Not because they understand it. Or us.

fatnoah 8y ago

I remember servers being relatively open, i.e. "we just got some new Alphas, we'll give you an account to check it out".