Remember when there was no internet? It wasn’t really all that long ago. Maybe you had an acquaintance that was an early Prodigy or Compuserve user. Remember asking them what it did? Trying to figure out just what it was people did on a network, other than email?
The first version of Netscape came out at the end of 1994. For our purposes the first decade of the internet is 1994-2004, just for the sake of quantization. What were you doing on the internet in those early days when everyone was just figuring out what the possibilities were?
Many of the early cornerstones of the internet have gone the way of the mimeograph, but many got it right and influenced those that would follow.
Following are the things that conspired to drain my free time in that first decade of the internet. I’m sure to miss some entries that you feel should be included, so make use of the comments to add your $.02 following the article.
- The BBS The BBS predates the internet as we know it, and in the early days of the internet the BBS was still going strong. Precursor of the web forum, the BBS was a command line interface bulletin board using a text interface. Think Lynx, telnet and irc client, and you’ll get an idea of the interface. The web browser effectively killed off the BBS, but the BBS was the template for communication via the internet. Along with irc and usenet also very big in the early days of piracy. There are still a handful of BBS’s out there.
- Usenet Usenet followed in the footsteps of the BBS, and also predated the internet as we know it. Like the BBS, usenet eventually led to the web forum and the mailing list. Usenet was the home of the troll and the flamer, and like the BBS was also a home to pirates of all kinds. Bad social behavior and spam helped kill off usenet, but it’s still with us, just not as widely used as it was a decade ago.
- IRC IRC also predated the modern internet, and has the dubious distinction of being the model for AOL chat. Text based, realtime chat via the internet. While the idea of being able to meet like-minded people and share information is a noble one, irc also added to internet piracy, bad social behavior and internet stalking/pedophilia. IRC is still going strong, but I don’t think the numbers are anywhere near what they once were. Home to a significant number of petulant youths and socially maladjusted rejects.
- Quake Yeah, it’s a game, but Quake introduced most users to the possibilities of TCP/IP capable multiplayer. While Doom can take credit for network play, realtime in-game chat, and userland mods, Quake and the Quakeworld variants brought it to the masses like no game before. Quake spurred the creation of a user community in a way that nothing had before. Quake sites like Blues News, Planet Quake, Telefragged, ad infinitum. Quake irc channels on every network. Qspy (Gamespy for you kids out there). Hardware acceleration would have never taken off as fast were it not for Quake. Showed everyone else how to do online multiplayer for fps games. Not a lot of servers anymore, but you can still find them. I recommend it not just for the history lesson but because it still rocks twelve and a half years later.
- Amazon.com Hey, when you get it right you get it right. I would rather buy from Amazon than just about anyone. Not just because they have very competitive prices. Not because of the convenience of shopping at home. Not because of the free shipping and zero tax. Where Amazon shines most is customer service. Got an issue with a big purchase, one that may very well be a headache to get resolved? Never fear. Friendliest, most customer-oriented return and exchange policy, ever. Granted, Amazon outsources their customer service, so you may experience some frustration getting the point across to Ravichandran on the phone, but they have always sorted out these sort of issues to my satisfaction, and that is a big deal.
- Slashdot News portal? Weblog? Did Slashdot invent their format? No. Maybe credit Dr. Glen Barry or Stephen Heaslip with that honor. Does every news site and blog out there owe something to Slashdot? Absolutely. I read this site at least three or four times a day in ’97 and ’98, and still read it at least once a day in 2009. News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
- Gamespot Videogame journalism done right. Along with it’s competitor IGN, Gamespot quickly became the place the look for previews, movies and screenshots of upcoming console and pc games, and home to editorial game reviews that, surprisingly, could be trusted. Love Gamespot. Don’t love that it probably killed of the gaming mags that were actually good (remember Next Generation and Intelligent Gamer?), but it’s a sign of the times.
- Freshmeat This was the place for linux (and unix) users to stay abreast of new code releases for their operating system. Still around, but less important as most distros have built-in package management that mostly does away with the need for it. Back in the day I used Freshmeat.net just as much as I did Slashdot and Blue’s News.
- OSNews I have long been an avid operating system geek. The grass is always greener, and I love rolling up my sleeves and digging into an os to get it to look and act exactly how I want it to. In fact, the only operating system I ever used that I stuck with because I thought it was pretty damn close to what an os should be was the NeXT Mach OS. I still use it today, only it’s called Mac OS X now. I also love BSD, particularly FreeBSD, and I dabble with linux and commercial unix variants, and have used a laundry list of os’es too long to go into for the purposes of this article. I get excited by uncharted os ground, hence my fixation with Amiga OS 4.x and Morphos, and by God, I will lay my hands on a Pegasos 2 so I can run both………back to the point. I found out early on that I wasn’t the only one suffering from this affliction, and we have our own site at osnews.com. I still check this site daily.
Next time I’ll take a peek at the second decade (2004-) to see if any of the Johnny-come-latelys deserve to join this hallowed company.
In the meantime, please fill the comments section with all the things I missed, or just those that were important to you in the early days of the internet.
