4 ms·

I was in high school in the late nineties and I was looking forward to some nostalgia but this is hard to watch. I had kinda blocked from my memory that most pe

I was in high school in the late nineties and I was looking forward to some nostalgia but this is hard to watch. I had kinda blocked from my memory that most people felt they needed a computer but didn’t know why. The internet was so new, it wasn’t essential yet. We still used the phone book as a primary source. Most people’s internet was through America Online and you stayed in their walled garden. They still bought computers out of fear of getting left behind. I did a lot of free IT work for friend’s parents in those days.

Maursault 3y ago
> The internet was so new, it wasn’t essential yet. The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then, by another 12yo. And the Internet was essential, critically so, by 1995. It was the WWW that was new, about 2 years old.
- daveguy 3y ago
  I think the implied statement was: the internet was so new, it wasn't essential to the general public yet. It very much was not essential to the general public and it wasn't until the www made it easily accessible for commerce that it became essential to the general public. But you are absolutely correct that the internet itself wasn't new.
- kloch 3y ago
  The first web browser that integrated text and graphic (Mosaic) was two years old but it was Netscape that really kicked things off with the general public. Netscape was only a few months old at this point. Another essential component was real IP access by the end user. Up to this point your options for home use were sandboxed "on-line" services, telnet/shell accounts, or static SLIP service for power users. It was dynamic PPP and the emergence of dial-up ISP's that made browsers like Netscape usable by the masses. This started to happen on a wide scale around 1994-1995. RFC1661 (PPP) was not formalized until July 1994.
  - yardie 3y ago
    I washed so many cars as a preteen to afford a $30/mo SLIP connection. PPP must have rolled out really fast or went through a few beta periods. I remember using it as early as ‘93. Our ISP gave you the option of SLIP or PPP when you dialed in.
  - musicale 3y ago
    > The first web browser that integrated text and graphic (Mosaic) was two years old What about the NeXT WWW browser? https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/history/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/history/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  To be really pedantic, "the internet" as an uncapitalized commonly used proper noun didn't exist until the 2010s. Connecting a Windows computer to the Internet with Winsock didn't happen until the early 90s.
- O1111OOO 3y ago
  > The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then... This is more of a side note response. I often see a huge disconnect between those who lived during a period in question and those who read about history. I imagine that this transitory stage in computing was before your time. More often than not, it's fascinating to see how... off, the readers of history are versus those who lived through the period. This, sometimes, becomes painfully clear when it is actual history for one generation but only a recent memory for another older generation.
  - oldandboring 3y ago
    Well-said, my friend.

Maursault 3y ago

> The internet was so new, it wasn’t essential yet. The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then, by another 12yo. And the Internet was essential, critically so, by 1995. It was the WWW that was new, about 2 years old.

daveguy 3y ago
I think the implied statement was: the internet was so new, it wasn't essential to the general public yet. It very much was not essential to the general public and it wasn't until the www made it easily accessible for commerce that it became essential to the general public. But you are absolutely correct that the internet itself wasn't new.
kloch 3y ago
The first web browser that integrated text and graphic (Mosaic) was two years old but it was Netscape that really kicked things off with the general public. Netscape was only a few months old at this point. Another essential component was real IP access by the end user. Up to this point your options for home use were sandboxed "on-line" services, telnet/shell accounts, or static SLIP service for power users. It was dynamic PPP and the emergence of dial-up ISP's that made browsers like Netscape usable by the masses. This started to happen on a wide scale around 1994-1995. RFC1661 (PPP) was not formalized until July 1994.
- yardie 3y ago
  I washed so many cars as a preteen to afford a $30/mo SLIP connection. PPP must have rolled out really fast or went through a few beta periods. I remember using it as early as ‘93. Our ISP gave you the option of SLIP or PPP when you dialed in.
- musicale 3y ago
  > The first web browser that integrated text and graphic (Mosaic) was two years old What about the NeXT WWW browser? https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/history/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/history/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lern_too_spel 3y ago
To be really pedantic, "the internet" as an uncapitalized commonly used proper noun didn't exist until the 2010s. Connecting a Windows computer to the Internet with Winsock didn't happen until the early 90s.
O1111OOO 3y ago
> The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then... This is more of a side note response. I often see a huge disconnect between those who lived during a period in question and those who read about history. I imagine that this transitory stage in computing was before your time. More often than not, it's fascinating to see how... off, the readers of history are versus those who lived through the period. This, sometimes, becomes painfully clear when it is actual history for one generation but only a recent memory for another older generation.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  Well-said, my friend.