Only a Teenager: The Internet
It’s hard to believe sometimes that the Internet, which is such a staple of our society, is just a teenager. For the masses it is even younger as the embracing of websites and email was maybe in the mid 1990’s or later. For me, email first came to my attention in 1993 while at college. I’m probably lucky to have not had all the distraction of the net in the early 90’s while at college, it would have made it even tougher. Even as I look back to websites that I built in the mid 90’s and laugh at what they involved, it’s hard to believe that all of this technology, and you might as well include cell phones, is so young.
In yesterday’s USA Today, technology columnist Kevin Maney looked in his rear view mirror at the last 15 years and recalled some of the interviews in that time, "A look back at many years of stops along ‘information superhighway". The founders of Yahoo slaving away with just 16 employees managed to build a 40+ billion dollar company, all on the net.
I thought it was a fun look back at some different people that helped bring the Internet to the masses and it reminded me just how far the Internet can take you … not bad for a teenager. The fun part for me is working with where things will go next and how they will continue to grow.
Do you have any "remember when" comments regarding the internet? Please share …
Posted on March 8th, 2007 by Jeff Wagner
Filed under: internet
If you like what you're reading, please subscribe to this blog.
Related Posts
- Prepare for meltdown!
- Back In The Saddle After a Week Unplugged
- Websites Still Forcing Users Into Specific Browsers? Yup, Just Use CarSoup.com
Before the “Internet”, there was ARPANET, a department of defense network, and even UUNET, a Unix to Unix network where individual computers with modems bridged the country, transferring emails through largely local phone calls. Instead of emails taking seconds, they might take a whole day.
In 1983 when I went off to college, a 300 baud modem was the standard. That’s 300 compared to today’s 56,000 “baud” modems, or ever faster DSL/Cable modems. You could literally see the letters display across the screen.
The father, arguably, to the World Wide Web is Gopher, developed at the U of MN, except that Gopher wasn’t so graphical. It was good at sharing information. The “Web” has evolved so much more.
Some of my fondest memories were the Unix command “Talk” where I was in the Twin Cities “talking” to someone in Duluth, without paying long distance!
Great stuff Todd! Thanks for touching on the “parents” of the net. Every technology has it’s predecessors.
It’s funny to me listening to you guys talk about some of the old Internet technologies that you used in college. Why i’m laughing is because those are the things we were taught about in my programming and networking classes when i was in college (1997 UMD, Go Bulldogs).
But you guys are right on…those very basic communication methods were the ground work for where we are today.
Man do I wish I knew Mark Cuban when he started doing internet radio, I guess that worked out alright for him.
Even when I was a freshman being able to play Warcraft over the school’s LAN during study breaks was a ton of fun. ICQ was widely popular as a free chating program. Also, a guy on my floor got one of the first CD burners on the market. When everyone found out about that he had cd requests from most of the freshman class!
Good stuff, can’t wait to see what the next ten years will bring.
That sounds like another post to me … “What will the next ten years bring online?” It would be great to time capsule those and then laugh or be amazed in ten years.