The Unrecognizable Internet of 1996

This article is looking at the older Internet from one point of view. There was much more to it than the Web. There were thriving communities on Usenet and IRC. People had personal home pages instead of MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/Whatever accounts. You hosted your own scanned photos.

Articles like these makes me want to strangle the author.<p>No, Sir, my Indy with Ethernet and Mosaic/Netscape was quite up to the task. In fact, my telnet to the Sun and ftp and gopher pre-web was already immensely useful.<p>If it sucked for you 1996, maybe it was just you.

I was on the internet in 89 and found tons of things to do:<p>Irc, Usenet, Mucks, Muds, Gopher, Ftp.<p>By 1996 we were complaining about the Aol users ruining the internet.

I remember at a young age telling my step dad that he should be buying domain names of big companies and sitting on them. he laughed at me. :(<p>I'm the sort of kid who was buying candy in bulk and reselling it at school for a hefty markup. I'm pissed I missed out on all the easy money in web 1.0. If only I was born 10 years earlier.

Most people these days are lamenting about the death of innovation in the valley. It reminds me of when Arthur Rock said that innovation was dead right before the internet started taking off.<p>"He predicts few dramatic technological breakthroughs in the next several years, but expects that recent inventions will enable dozens of companies to push electronics into every aspect of life."<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949965-1,00.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949965-1,00...</a><p>Many people copy success so tons of "me-too" companies get started, but technology just like all industries are dominated by black swans.

In 1996 I was just starting to "code" web sites, so I found lots to do. That doesn't seem like a long time ago until I remember I was 12 at the time, but I digress.<p>Also, spending all evening on IRC was a common event.

Journalists shouldn't write science- or technology-related articles. Ever.