Jurassic Web 430
theodp writes "It wasn't so long ago, but Slate's Farhad Manjoo notes that The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today. No YouTube, Digg, Huffington Post, Gawker, Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia. In 1996, Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web and were paying for the Internet by the hour. Today, Nielsen says we spend about 27 hours a month online (present company excepted, of course!)." I thought in 1996 all we did was idle in IRC channels while we wrote code in other terminals.
1996 nothing... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I think about the internet in 1996 (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think about what was there, then, I think about what we have lost since then.
So many sites that were popular in that timeframe are no longer around. Internet Archives doesn't capture all those funny, cool sites that used to be there and are, sadly, no longer around.
Re:IRC channels? (Score:5, Interesting)
"I thought in 1996 all we did was idle in IRC channels while we wrote code in other terminals."
Yet another person who does not know he can find porn on the net.
Yet another person who is apparently unfamiliar with DCC. Why do you think we idled on IRC to begin with? It sure as hell wasn't for the intelligent conversation.
I wrote a paper back in 1995 for the WWW conf. (Score:3, Interesting)
RE: Ah, the era of homepages (Score:2, Interesting)
If you ask me, the facebooks/myspaces of today are way worse aesthetically. The worst you had to fear in those days was an embedded MIDI; now I've got high-quality MP3s streaming themselves without asking and fucking up the music I'm already listening to.
Also, maybe they just didn't have the technology or bandwidth to piss away, but people didn't leave high-res 1562x968 pictures in comments sections (whose parallel I guess would be a "guest book", in 90's web terms).
I'll take blinking text, frames, and animated GIFs over that any day. (I know, I know...get off my lawn!)
Re:IMDB was up (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia => Everything (up to the reader whether this was progress or regression)
Wikipedia has roots right back in the first versions of WorldWideWeb. TBL's idea was that every web browser would be a web server as well. Every user would serve a few pages and browse a lot. His design also incorporated editing directly into the browser, so you could edit any page you had permissions for.
This didn't really catch on, because a lot of users were on dial-up connections which were too slow for serving and were only online for a small amount of time per month and so could not be used for anything that people might access at any time. Now, the average broadband connection is fast enough for lightweight web serving and is always on. Run a small server in the router and set the headers so ISPs can aggressively cache your content, and you've got a proper, distributed, Wikipedia.
No Tub Girl?!?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
TubGirl
MeatSpin
Two Girls on Cup
Re:1996 nothing... (Score:5, Interesting)
You remember the MIT coffee pot cam? Some joker who worked upstairs put a digital camera next to the coffee pot so he could point his browser at the link and see if there was any coffee made, without having to get his ass up and walk to the pot.
Now that was entertainment. I knew people who didn't even go to MIT who checked that thing ALL THE TIME.
Re:Spam? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether you agree with HuffPo's openly liberal politics or not, it's hard to deny that there was nothing like this kind of widespread online political commentary 10 years ago - certainly nothing that attracted the kind of traffic - or had the same kind of influence - that it now enjoys. Got to be a good thing - people need to be more interested in politics.
As for Gawker... ummmmmm... errrrrr.... yep you're right.
I spent more time online in 1996 than now. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's see if I can remember this correctly. In 1996 I was a Junior and then Senior in high-school. These were some of my activities...
1) Heavy IRC usage.
2) Designing webpages for my high-school.
3) Writing versions of Minesweeper and Life as Java applets.
4) Commenting on Robert Jordan novels in AOL message boards and usenet.
5) Doing not-quite-legal activities that would have involved AOL not being happy with me if they found out. (think statute of limitations have passed)
6) Playing Federation on AOL.
7) Playing Bolo on school network, and wishing my home connection was fast enough to play at home.
8) Downloading music and games from FirstClass or HotLine BBS systems (before I gained a piracy-conscience).
9) I think I played a lot of World of Warcraft 2 online in the summer of 1996 while using Harvard's fast connection.
10) Trying to figure out what the point of Gopher was, and eventually giving up.
The main thing I remember is that while the Web and email were important, they were both a much smaller portion of my online usage than they are today. I think the turning point was 1997, where the web took over in terms of content.
One amusing anecdote from 1996. I remember overhearing two people who couldn't figure out how to email each other. They decided it was because one of them used Netscape and the other used Internet Explorer, and decided just to use the phone from then on instead.
Re:Ah, the era of homepages (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that's a myth. There are no serious sources that indicate that.
Re:1996 nothing... (Score:3, Interesting)
The coffee machine still exists! After it broke in 2001, it was bought by german magazine "Der Spiegel". They got the machine fixed by the vendor and created a new webcam. See here: http://www.spiegel.de/static/popup/coffeecam/cam2.html [spiegel.de]
nostalgia isn't what it used to be.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Wasn't So Long Ago?!" (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a freshman in high school, and the Internet wasn't as unrecognizable as the story summary implies. People played graphics-focused first person shooters online, used annoying chat acronyms like "lol," and flamed each other on message boards about stupid shit. I got home dialup access in 1997, and it was unlimited access with a flat fee. There were already banner ads, annoying Flash sites, and commercialization. I believe Drudge Report was even around then, with almost the exact same visual design that it has now. Linux nerds ranted about Micro$oft. People played StarCraft on Battle.net. There wasn't a Google, but there was Yahoo and Infoseek. People traded MP3s to play in Winamp. Sometime in 1996 or 1997, I was searching for something about Gameboys and found a page about Gameboy development and discovered emulators for the first time--even that scene already existed.
When I really think back on it, it doesn't feel drastically different from today other than more people using it and some obvious improvements in presentation. There's no major paradigm difference other than maybe portable devices, but PDAs already existed then, as did laptops. Companies want you to think everything is new, though.
If anything, culture itself kind of flatlined and became an amalgamated mass of tired memes and pop trends. It doesn't even feel like music or clothing has changed much in a decade.
Re:IRC channels? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, seems to me there was a time when conversation on IRC was somewhat intelligent. In the early days it was all academics, scientists, engineers, grads, etc. Then it was a yearly flood of university freshmen. As it grew, quality of conversation declined. Then there was the AOL invasion (1996?) where everyone and their developmentally delayed hormone challenged nephews suddenly had access to IRC. It's never been the same again.
So the average mental and chronological age of the conversationalists became younger, gender representation became disproportionate, average education levels went from university level to high school, vocabulary levels went from college to kindergarten, etc.
It's just that recent comers have no frame of reference for quality conversation on IRC, they've never seen it.
Re:IRC channels? (Score:3, Interesting)
You and I must be remembering a different IRC. I remember chanwars and netsplits. In one channel I visited, there was a guy with a timed script that just said "heh." Over and over and over. Also, people constantly slapped each other with trouts thanks to mIRC.
I actually think IRC is more intelligent now.
Re:Spam? (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't you forgetting Drudge Report? It came out in what, 1997? It also kind of broke a major news story about a certain president that Newsweek was planning to cover up.
The mainstream media outlets STILL hate Matt Drudge for scooping it.
Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
So times were terrible back then! Imagine. I sometimes had to go to "friends' houses" and to the "theaters" and even step outside once or twice. I am very glad we have come this far.
I didn't have to go out in 1988. There was more than enough reading on USENET to keep me occupied 24/7. And the shit was so much more interesting than on the sites mentioned. Ever read sci.nanotech?