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> the largest image that could be conjured is related to viewing content created offline Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which l

> the largest image that could be conjured is related to viewing content created offline Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which large corporations dominated everything and the users 'knew their place' and consumed content and products. Occasionally, a corporation would stoop low as to ask users' feedback to improve their product. And people would praise and elevate that corporation as being 'caring for their customers'. That was it. The extent of users' say in anything. Early Internet still reflected that world order. It was a one way street in which the people consumed what the corporations produced. There weren't even comment forms under any article in any prominent publication. After all, who are you, a lowly pleb, to comment under an article in which a glorious, 6-figure columnist from the 'right background' wrote. Know your place. User-generated content lived in the fringes of the Internet in those days. It was the plebs' place. The unwashed. Then comes blogging. Social media. User-generated content starts to dominate and becomes de-facto content. Everything turns upside down. We are living in its aftermath, in which its even hard to imagine how one-way the early Internet was.

kurthr 4y ago
I hear "knew their place" and all I can think of is that they knew they were watching ads... now many people think that all their content is free (like information wants to be ;^) not realizing they are are the product being sold. It's not like tiktok/Insta or the news/blog promotional articles are anything but ads... people just don't "know their place" any more.
axus 4y ago
GeoCities started taking off in early 1996, at the same time NYTimes.com started publishing. Of course there was AOL and personal webpages before that.
bcrosby95 4y ago
> Early Internet still reflected that world order. Early internet had little to none of that world order. Those corporations are slow to act and tend to be last to the party. I think you're conflating people from that world order and how they interpreted the internet, with how the internet actually was. > User-generated content lived in the fringes of the Internet in those days. It was the plebs' place. The unwashed. User generated content was a large majority of the content of the early internet. Usenet. MUDs. Email. Forums. Random people's university websites.
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  I was going to say this as well. Even pre internet my first inclination from dialing BBS was how do I make one of these? How can I get a dedicated phone line in my bedroom? From there, chatting with people who called my board, then moving to IRC which was all UGC. Bots, scripts, file hosts etc. distributed servers. I think my take away is more that these large “visions” of what the internet could be were made by outsiders from an outside vantage point. They had difference answers to the question of what the internet could be. The insiders were too busy playing around on it to think about answering that question.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > Early internet had little to none of that world order. Those corporations are slow to act and tend to be last to the party. Those corporations dominated the Internet. It was NYT et al who was doing the publishing and the users doing the reading. Large, incumbent corporations dominated online sales. That they were slow to react to the changes and therefore the user-driven Internet eventually took over from them for that reason do not change the fact that the early Internet was literally a one-way street.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
yazzku 4y ago
> Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which large corporations dominated everything Unlike today, right?
goatlover 4y ago
The PLATO system had online user feedback in the 70s, and users were able to add content, including making their own lessons and games. Helps that it was an educational system, running on connected networks at different universities.
ryanbrunner 4y ago
> Early Internet still reflected that world order. It was a one way street in which the people consumed what the corporations produced. There weren't even comment forms under any article in any prominent publication. After all, who are you, a lowly pleb, to comment under an article in which a glorious, 6-figure columnist from the 'right background' wrote. Know your place. I think this is a fair statement for the world wide web (although there were pretty notable standouts, particularly in the very late 90s), but every other protocol was far more democratized with very little corporate influence, and those protocols were far more relevant in 1994 than they are now.
jdkee 4y ago
"Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which large corporations dominated everything and the users 'knew their place' and consumed content and products." I would say that describes the online world now, not at the internets adoption in 1990s.
- unity1001 4y ago
  No, today small business run ecommerce, user-generated content dominate large swath of the Internet. Even what Amazon does is providing a venue for small or medium businesses to sell.
pjlegato 4y ago
Exactly the opposite of this happened. Almost all content on the early-mid 90s web was user-generated. The bulk of it was personal "homepages" with low production values describing hobbies or technical interests. Very few large corporations had even heard of this crazy new "Internet" thing in the 90s, and even fewer cared. Almost none had a corporate webpage even listing their address and phone number, much less produced any content at all. Many had the .com domain name corresponding to their corporate brand registered by domain squatters they later had to buy it from. Some didn't even notice for years.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > Exactly the opposite of this happened. Almost all content on the early-mid 90s web was user-generated I guess its because I combined content creation + publication under the title 'content that people are misunderstanding. Large companies created the content, they published it, they dominated the views. The user generated content being seen by a few hundred people a month in a forum or a personal homepage on the fringes of the Internet did not make any dent in their monopoly at the time.

kurthr 4y ago

I hear "knew their place" and all I can think of is that they knew they were watching ads... now many people think that all their content is free (like information wants to be ;^) not realizing they are are the product being sold. It's not like tiktok/Insta or the news/blog promotional articles are anything but ads... people just don't "know their place" any more.

axus 4y ago

GeoCities started taking off in early 1996, at the same time NYTimes.com started publishing. Of course there was AOL and personal webpages before that.

bcrosby95 4y ago

> Early Internet still reflected that world order. Early internet had little to none of that world order. Those corporations are slow to act and tend to be last to the party. I think you're conflating people from that world order and how they interpreted the internet, with how the internet actually was. > User-generated content lived in the fringes of the Internet in those days. It was the plebs' place. The unwashed. User generated content was a large majority of the content of the early internet. Usenet. MUDs. Email. Forums. Random people's university websites.

enos_feedler 4y ago
I was going to say this as well. Even pre internet my first inclination from dialing BBS was how do I make one of these? How can I get a dedicated phone line in my bedroom? From there, chatting with people who called my board, then moving to IRC which was all UGC. Bots, scripts, file hosts etc. distributed servers. I think my take away is more that these large “visions” of what the internet could be were made by outsiders from an outside vantage point. They had difference answers to the question of what the internet could be. The insiders were too busy playing around on it to think about answering that question.
unity1001 4y ago
> Early internet had little to none of that world order. Those corporations are slow to act and tend to be last to the party. Those corporations dominated the Internet. It was NYT et al who was doing the publishing and the users doing the reading. Large, incumbent corporations dominated online sales. That they were slow to react to the changes and therefore the user-driven Internet eventually took over from them for that reason do not change the fact that the early Internet was literally a one-way street.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

yazzku 4y ago

> Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which large corporations dominated everything Unlike today, right?

goatlover 4y ago

The PLATO system had online user feedback in the 70s, and users were able to add content, including making their own lessons and games. Helps that it was an educational system, running on connected networks at different universities.

ryanbrunner 4y ago

> Early Internet still reflected that world order. It was a one way street in which the people consumed what the corporations produced. There weren't even comment forms under any article in any prominent publication. After all, who are you, a lowly pleb, to comment under an article in which a glorious, 6-figure columnist from the 'right background' wrote. Know your place. I think this is a fair statement for the world wide web (although there were pretty notable standouts, particularly in the very late 90s), but every other protocol was far more democratized with very little corporate influence, and those protocols were far more relevant in 1994 than they are now.

jdkee 4y ago

"Its because 1990s world was still the feudal, one-way world in which large corporations dominated everything and the users 'knew their place' and consumed content and products." I would say that describes the online world now, not at the internets adoption in 1990s.

unity1001 4y ago
No, today small business run ecommerce, user-generated content dominate large swath of the Internet. Even what Amazon does is providing a venue for small or medium businesses to sell.

pjlegato 4y ago

Exactly the opposite of this happened. Almost all content on the early-mid 90s web was user-generated. The bulk of it was personal "homepages" with low production values describing hobbies or technical interests. Very few large corporations had even heard of this crazy new "Internet" thing in the 90s, and even fewer cared. Almost none had a corporate webpage even listing their address and phone number, much less produced any content at all. Many had the .com domain name corresponding to their corporate brand registered by domain squatters they later had to buy it from. Some didn't even notice for years.

unity1001 4y ago
> Exactly the opposite of this happened. Almost all content on the early-mid 90s web was user-generated I guess its because I combined content creation + publication under the title 'content that people are misunderstanding. Large companies created the content, they published it, they dominated the views. The user generated content being seen by a few hundred people a month in a forum or a personal homepage on the fringes of the Internet did not make any dent in their monopoly at the time.