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Jurassic Web

theodp writes "It wasn't so long ago, but Slate's Farhad Manjoo notes that The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today. No YouTube, Digg, Huffington Post, Gawker, Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia. In 1996, Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web and were paying for the Internet by the hour. Today, Nielsen says we spend about 27 hours a month online (present company excepted, of course!)." I thought in 1996 all we did was idle in IRC channels while we wrote code in other terminals.

13 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. IRC channels? by Anita+Coney · · Score: 3, Funny

    "I thought in 1996 all we did was idle in IRC channels while we wrote code in other terminals."

    Yet another person who does not know he can find porn on the net.

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  2. Re:IMDB was up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sadly, GeoCities existed then, and even scarier is: it still does.

  3. Re:1996 nothing... by WillAdams · · Score: 5, Funny

    Spyglass corporation's Mosaic was licensed by a company called Microsoft as the basis for a browser which they named Internet Explorer --- Spyglass had an absolutely fantastic deal where they got royalties on _every sale_ of the browser.

    William

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  4. Ugh by sean_nestor · · Score: 5, Funny
    It's 1996, and you're bored. What do you do? If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you areâ""Welcome." You check your mail, then spend a few minutes chatting with your AOL buddies about which of you has the funniest screen name (you win, pimpodayear94).

    I can't believe I read this and immediately thought "...but AOL didn't allow screen names over 10 characters until 1999..."

    I'm a loser.

  5. Re:Ah, the era of homepages by Xest · · Score: 4, Funny

    "There was still all the porn you could imagine though."

    There was also all the porn I couldn't imagine too.

  6. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nerds were nerds long before the web. What is this "outside" of which you speak?

    --
    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  7. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Funny

    What is this "outside" of which you speak?

    It's where you had to go when you were traveling to the dungeon masters house ;)

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  8. Re:Ah, the era of homepages by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Funny

    They were all on geocities then. Now they're all on facebook/myspace.

    Yep. Those awful 90's Geocitites user-generated content pages get my vote for worst use of disk space EVAH. Here's my resume (identical to every 90's college student CIS rez) here's my girlfriend (identical to every 90's college student g/f pics), here' my Honda Civic (ditto), here's pics of my g/f's cats.

    =Smidge=

    They were literally the same pictures. For disk space reasons they only had a few pictures of girlfriends/cat/civics and they just generate a page by picking one of each at random. Most people had so little individuality that they didn't notice.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  9. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Funny

    News flash: amateur astronomers are nerds, as are geologists and peleontologists. You can hardly do any of thet that without going outside.

    Uh, yes you can:
    astronomers: Bedroom window
    geologists and paleontologists: Hole in the basement floor

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  10. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by Ihmhi · · Score: 3, Funny

    You should see the mess that kid made in the basement with his research on geothermal energy!

    On the plus site, his parents unplugged the hot water heater and the water still stays at a toasty 2,000F.

  11. Re:Ah, the era of homepages by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 4, Funny

    THIS PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

  12. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by geminidomino · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's the place where the T-Rex ambushed you in the middle of an open plain whenever you were going in the opposite direction from what the DM wanted you to go.

  13. Re:No Huffie Post!?! Oh My GOSH!!! by harry666t · · Score: 3, Funny

    > It's where you had to go when you were traveling to the dungeon masters house ;)

    Aaaah, you mean the caves under the basement...

    I think that "outside" is that thing with sun and stuff. I saw it on a photo, it's incredible.