We didn't have search engines in the earliest days, but we still found what we needed rather quickly. Gopher was pretty slick. I still have occasion to use it.

We didn't have search engines in the earliest days, but we still found what we needed rather quickly. Gopher was pretty slick. I still have occasion to use it. IMO gopher is better than even the current web for certain things. Remember before search engines, there were this lists, sure, but more interesting were the Web Rings. (Yea, even that far back, everything about hypertext was one mixed metaphor after another.) Now I'm wondering if the archie (and veronica) search engines that had their brief moment are still operational. So much info with so little overhead and spam!