Believe it or not, the Internet didn’t ALWAYS exist.
Yes, I’m talking directly to all the young folks out there who have never known a world that didn’t allow them the convenience to get online whenever they felt like it.
So let’s hear from some older folks about the way that the Internet used to be back in the day.
Pay attention, young people…you’re about to get a history lesson!
1. The old days.
“How about upgrading to a 300 baud modem. Bulletin boards before there was popular internet. Borrowing software from a public library – it had a sticker saying not to copy it.
And of course, my first Seagate 40mb external SCSI drive that cost $3,000. I’m surprised my wife didn’t divorce me.”
2. Oh, no!
“Opening an email attachment of digital fireworks and getting the Happy99 virus.
Finding websites you like through Webrings, no search function.”
3. Do you remember?
“GOPHER.
That screechy 300 bps modem handshake sound.
Not being afraid to use your real name.”
4. So cool!
“People would post “you’ve GOT to try this keyboard shortcut, it’s SO COOL!!!”
But it was like some kind of command that brought up an infinite amount of windows and you’d have to force restart your computer to get it to stop.”
5. People were nervous.
“Y2K.
My dad worked in I.T. for a major corporation and when the world didn’t end at midnight on January 1, 2000, he got a bonus.”
6. Old stuff.
“Ebaumsworld.com
Sims2.com when it was a myspace clone
Flash games
When you could post “give me money” on ebay and not be taken down.”
7. Back to the drawing board.
“Spending all day typing in programs printed in magazines (and then spending the next week proofreading trying to figure out why it didn’t work).”
8. No pictures.
“Text only webpages.
Working for a company that had internet access because it was prior to the commercial web and having to book time in the lab to access it.”
9. Glory days.
“The internet is nothing like it was in the beginning. There seemed to be more diversity in websites and sites to visit.
There’s a YouTube video that speaks on the d**d internet theory, that the current internet is nothing compared to the vastness of the glory days.
On average how many websites do we visit on a regular basis? 4 or 5 different websites? FB/Twitter/Snapchat/YouTube”
10. Wrong!
“Talking to local nerds on BBS Bulletin Boards about how the World Wide Web was going to be ‘just a fad’.”
11. Big for a minute.
“I recently came upon a post parodying leave Britney alone and not a single person in the comments knew the reference.
That sure made me feel old.”
12. Back in the day…
“In the pre-search engine days, there were a handful of ways to find new content. Web rings. Links pages (everybody’s page had a list of links to other sites they liked).
You could buy printed directories of websites — essentially a phone book for the web — at bookstores, although publishing lag times meant a good number of the listed sites were gone by the time the book came out. I can recall submitting my personal website to Yahoo back then.
They indexed websites by categories and getting into their index meant a major increase in traffic to your page. A year or two later, AltaVista and a handful of other search engines came along, and a bit after that came Google and the rest is history.”
Now it’s your turn.
Tell us what you think about this!
Do it in the comments!
