Happy 25th, Dot Com
They grow up so fast, don’t they? To some of us, at least, it seems like only yesterday that this whole “internets” thing got started. I remember how excited I got when I first started seeing web addresses referenced in tv commercials back in the mid to late ’90s. Little did I know, really until today, how far back the commercial internet reached. For, as CNN reports :
It was 25 years ago — March 15, 1985 — that the first dot-com domain name — Symbolics.com — appeared on the Internet, ushering in the commercial age of the World Wide Web.
Having a domain name made it simpler for the average person to access a Web site. Instead of having to remember a long series of numbers and dots, you could type in ATT.com, IBM.com or CNN.com.
Of course, there weren’t a whole lot of people hooked up to the internet in 1985, and it wasn’t until 1991 that Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web was introduced to the world. As the article goes on to say, it took over two years for the first 100 .com sites to get up and running. As late as 1995, there were only about 18,000. Today — more than 80 million.
I think that 200 years from now, when people look back on all the inventions, innovations, and technology that came out of the 20th Century, the internet will be right there near the top. Very few other innovations have had the kind of fundamental effect on everyday life that the internet has. So, as a guy with a very historically-oriented mind, I want to be sure to mark this date, and wish the commercial internet a happy 25th birthday.
Anyone have any memories of when you first became aware of the internet?
Tags: The Internets
Still remember dialing into the public library and using gopher to search websites. Back then the saying “surfing the web” had a very real component to it as I would pop from web site to web site depending on the links on the page that I was on. Now, i just go to google and do a search and I’m done. Kinda miss the old days…
Plus the pr0n was pretty low resolution in the old days 🙂
Ah, for the golden age of the BBS … anyone else squander valuable time playing Trade Wars?
yep. but my time wasn’t all that valuable that long ago 🙂
In 1981, more or less, we had to hit certain college campuses so we could log in in the middle of the night to play Empire. 😀
Connecting to ARPANET with a 300-baud acoustic coupler.
Lawn. Off. Now.
(no, I’m not THAT old… I was 15 at the time)
Who remembers their first purchase on the Internet? I resisted for a long time due to security concerns, and I was probably right. My first purchase was a jogging stroller after my first child was born. I researched it and got the best deal online.
Soon after that my wife was panicked because she remembered she needed to buy a birthday present for a friend in another state. She wanted to buy a book, but it was around 11:00 at night and she didn’t have enough time to go the store and take it to the post office.
So I showed her how she could order it from Amazon, gift-wrapped with overnight delivery.
And the UPS trucks haven’t stopped coming to my house since.
I think I miss the old phone modem dial-up sound, too. There was a certain building of anticipation as you sat there, waiting a minute or more to get connected to the internet. It was new, and exciting. Getting on the internet was an activity in and of itself, regardless of where you went. The only analogy I can think of is how it must have felt for people 100+ years ago to go for a ride in an automobile, waiting for Father to hand crank the engine to get started. It was something not many people did, it was new, and just riding was fun, no matter where you went.
I used to work for a local ISP and I had actually gotten to the point that I could predict connect speed by listening to the buzzing and screeching. I connected to Compuserve in 1982 from a TRS80, although I had seen a basic teletype a few years earlier.
WAIS, Gopher and of course NNTP were all pretty advanced for the time. Never played any of the online games, but did play Diplomacy via email with a half-dozen other people over the course of a month or two.
During my senior year in high school (1994), we signed up for this new fangled thing called Compuserve where you could get news and email. Wasn’t really the internet as we know it today, as Compuserve and AOL were little internets unto themselves, but still.
When I was in school, you still went to the library and looked through the card catalog to find a book on a subject. Now, the whole world is at your fingertips. It’s hard to remember what things were like before.
You’re old.
I got through most of school using a set of (I think it was) 1982 World Book Encyclopedias. Who has them anymore? I thought I was cool in HS because we had an electric typewriter, then a word processor.
And Nemski, that’s not very nice…to point out.
Forget Compuserve, Prodigy was the bomb! 😉
I remember going to a workshop on the Internet in the mid-90s at Delaware Tech. I’d been logging on to local BBSes and exploring what they had to offer, but Gopher and the stuff they were saying about the World Wide Web seemed like the wave of the future. It was amazing. Still is, if you think about it. We take so much of this for granted, and it’s happened in such an incredibly short span of time.
Still have the World Books. A lot easier to graze thru than an online edition….for what that’s worth.
The only online encyclopedia that I use is Wikipedia. Almost hate to admit that, but it’s true. It’s the simplest, easiest of all the ones out there to use. No frills and easy-loading is the way to go … kind of like books. Hmm.
card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System! roaming the stacks, pulling and reading, black spine tape and white painted call numbers, such fond memories.
I’m a Luddite.I thought this computer stuff was just another fad.Like the hula-hoop or the yo-yo.Same story with typewriters.I never learned to type.I’m a hunt’n pecker.And I’m NOT admitting to being a hillbilly homosexual.
Our library had Encyclopedia Brittanica and perhaps Time Life books. That’s how you found out about a subject in a general way. You could only find out about the subjects that were in your local library and only the books they decided you could read. I’m not sure why people cry so much about censorship today. When I was young you had one newspaper in your town and whatever library books the town bought. That was it. You had to travel somewhere else. Sometimes I could get a look at the Louisville Courier-Journal but that was rare. The world is so different now, especially if you’re an information junkie like me.
Scott and nemski – I’ve got my eye on you now for that crack that I’m old.
And cut and paste meant cut and paste. I can’t remember how many National Geographics were sacrificed to illustrate term papers. We had stacks of back issues up in the attic — so many the ceiling had cracks from the weight.
See, UI isn’t that old.
I remember a guy at work, with some prodding, coming around to a few computers and setting up Mosaic, “this new thing they call a ‘Web Browser'”. Working for a company that was on the original “USENET”, it was amazing to see how you could access things and find information through “‘Alta Vista’, this thing called a search engine. Previous to that, if you wanted to download games (and after, if you wanted to keep your job), you had to use a 1200 baud dial-up modem from home, have a long distance number where you could get programs and know how to navigate the “Bulletin Board”.
Golly Rebecca–We weren’t “allowed” to cut the National Geographics. And when the back-up of National Geos happened out of the bookcase, my mom loaded ’em up to to “a school in the city” that needed them for their library. Believe it or not, the subscription to National Geographic was my great grandfather’s gift to us yearly “for our education”. I remember from them it was the first time I ever saw or heard of the Klu Klux Klan–and being scared. It wasn’t in a different country. On a funny note, I blame National Geographic for my children not being nursed. NO WAY was I going to do what I saw at that age, from those pages!!!!
Yup, the card catalog, heavy books, and a place to meet friends. I have to admit-I see my kids whip off a paper–and I really question the legitimacy still, because I see no pile of books, and no talk in the house of topic. But they really do cite, and research–and it all gets wrapped up–w/o the freak we used to go through of “oh no the library’s closing”, or “the hold on the book is in the next town”, or best yet–“you can’t check that one out”. I know the encyclopedia had to re-invent itself, but I still love to read and peruse through when I see a stray one. We started w/ the Golden Book encyclopedia when I was a kid, and it was great–but nothing beat getting to the pages of the frog w/ layover transparencies–WOW–that was science!!!
I used to ride to school on a dinosaur. Ah, the good ol’ days!
So your real name is Pebbles Flintstone?
OH NO–I may have outed you!!!!!:(
Or did you ever marry that Rubble guy?
We had to WALK five miles to the Internet.
Seriously – in high school, after school I used to hitchhike to Newark to use the public computer facilities, line printers and all.
I kept my maiden name though, Joanne. It’s Pebbles Flinstone-Rubble now. Barney’s my father-in-law, Bam Bam is my husband.
I used to ride to school on a dinosaur. Ah, the good ol’ days!
So, where you come from, that only makes you a couple thousand years old. That’s not so bad.
Pinkie link Joanne. Our National Geographic was a Christmas present every year from our aunt. For our education. And, she was a generous aunt who also gave us each a $25 savings bond toward our tuition. Those savings bonds came in very handy. The first year I was at Temple our tuition was $250 per semester for 18 credit hours.
Weep all you youngsters, weep!
My son STILL has to walk 5 miles to the internet. His only day off is Sunday, and the library that’s open that day is at least 5 miles.
My father spend my college savings bond money on a Pinto. TRUE story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcNeorjXMrE