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I "got online" in 1985. I don't recall a single point in time that a geographically local internet was ever useful or of interest to me.
by PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
I "got online" in 1985. I don't recall a single point in time that a geographically local internet was ever useful or of interest to me.
- iLoveOncall 9mo agoWhat about when you want to find hot singles in your area? Jokes aside, probably 10-20% of my browsing is related to local things, up to the country scale. From finding local restaurants or businesses, to finding about relevant laws or regulations, news, etc. That's not negligible.
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo agoFair point, but those information sources and those things were not connected to a local internet.
- allenu 9mo agoI think before Friendster, Myspace, then Facebook, there was a period where there were discussion forums for local communities. I think it was useful for meeting people. I remember friends in the late '90s used them frequently for chatting and some made new friends in real life that way. It was a short period, though, as more established companies came along that had a wider reach.
- xoxxala 9mo agoI got a 300 baud modem right around the same time. There were a few local BBSs that ran meetups, scavenger hunts, warez parties and the like. I got to know a bunch of the regulars from the area. Pretty cool time.
- holoduke 9mo agoBbs. Downloaded first shareware version of doom. Was it 4mb or something? I remember I had like 5kb/s and paid 5 cents a minute. My parents weren't happy those days. Now they are :)
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo agoBBS were a little off-tangent if you were actually using the internet itself, which I was (or least, I was pretty shortly after a few months on JANET (UK) and Bitnet (US & Israel).
- amatecha 9mo agoDoom Shareware was originally just 2mb or so, enough to fit on two floppies: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Shareware https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Shareware
- mycall 9mo agoYou never went to a LAN party then