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20th Anniversary of the Dawn of Dot-Com
btempleton writes "It was 20 years ago today when I posted to USENET the public launch of ClariNet, my electronic newspaper service delivered over the Internet. By finding a way around the NSFNet acceptable use policy, ClariNet was the first business founded to use the Internet as its platform for business, and the era of the 'dot-com' had begun. For the anniversary I have written a history of the founding of ClariNet and early internet business, which outlines how it all came down. Readers may also enjoy the included anecdote about what I term 'M5' reliability, where the news system was so robust that, like the M5 computer on Star Trek, even those authorized to do so were unable to shut it off; and a story of the earliest large SF eBook effort."
It's all just a series of tubes!
So in other words, we should ultimately blame you for the commercialization and spamming of the internet?
I'm not sure you should have told us that...
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
And, as then, this is the 20th anniversary of my first post.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
"It was 20 years ago today..."
Beatle plagiarist! I'm tellin' the RIAA!
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, so *you're* the asshole who started the commercialization, by shady interpretation of a use policy you agreed to, no less.
I bet next you'll tell us that you're also the asshole who sent the first spam.
jk... mostly.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It was in 1989 that I had my first account, at OCF.berkeley.edu... I posted something to comp.sys.amiga trying to get consensus as to whether or not it was a good idea to spend $300 on a 20 MB external HD for my A500. Those were the days. I didn't realize 20 years had passed.
sigh.
The CB App. What's your 20?
the best way I know to find out you were not first at something is to post on slashdot that you were.
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
This story is all well and interesting, but I imagine it's impossible to prove that you're the first business to make money exclusively over the internet. You might be "one of the first", but to go all the way to the birth of my business represents the birth of dot-com is a bit vain, no?
M5 suffered from the same megalomania and psychosis that its creator, Dr. Richard Daystrom, suffered from. This was the result of Daystrom having used his own 'memory engrams' in M5's programming.
Sig this!
I remember ClariNet. I remember thinking, "why in God's name should I pay for something that I can get for free?"
But it turns out, there are people who will do that, and the rest is history.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Hey, what happened to the story about the THC-laced tomatoes?
He's lying, of course. Look at his UID (149110), for crying out loud!
How about someone other than Brad himself telling us this is the first dot-com ever? Or would that ruin things by proving that he's fudging the details?
Seems to me I got a catalog from JT Toys (now JT's Stockroom at www.stockroom.com) in 1988. Sex is always first.
This guy is.
Sig this!
Damn you. Damn you all. I miss usenet.
I can see the fnords!
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
"But DEC...was not what we would consider a dot-com
It was the first commercial company to be connected to the Internet.
Sig this!
... so these Non-Suitable-For pictures and videos started in the 80ies!
....utterly self-aggrandizing in a way that's pretty close to pathological (I'd want a bit more face time to see if the author is this insufferable in person;) far more useful as a psychological study than a technological insight.
Good to see some things are eternally consistent. Brad is still trying to convince anyone who will listen he's The Most Important Person On The Internet. As it was in the ancient days, so it is today.
I remember ClariNet (having been on the net for a couple of years). I remember the bullshit megalomania. I remember the bright flameout. I remember all the subsequent, desperate attempts to to portray the whole thing as vastly more important than it was.
If *everyone* who comes after you does it better than you do, maybe you really aren't that innovative.
The history, t his blog. Well worthwhile site. I find looking at his panoramic photos very relaxing.
Yeahh I know my post is not relevant.
I'm an Old Programmer, too, and was introduced to the ArpaNet around the same time; had an adm3a terminal and a Ven-Tel 300 baud acoustic coupler loaned to me, while still a teen in highchool, but a friendly "free computing" promoter guy at UC Santa Cruz; years and years of watching all this stuff happen... and I never got rich! What'd I do wrong? D'oh!
Where'd I put my beard and suspenders? Damn kids, get offa my lawn!
- Tim
aka:
---> Tim Bessie ----- {ucbvax,dual}!unisoft!tim
---> Unisoft Systems; 739 Allston Way; Berkeley, CA 94710
---> (415) 644-1230 TWX II 910 366-2145
1989 was also the year I got out of the IBM360 / Bitnet ghetto and got a real unix account with real IP/TCP connections. Clarinet. The was always the server I kept seeing references to, but never found out what was there because they expected me to pay to look.
"why in God's name should I pay for something that I can get for free?" But it turns out, there are people who will do that
Ssssh! The RIAA can hear us...
This is Slashdot. We'd rather whine endlessly about you claiming that you were the first than actually come up with anything to show you weren't.
I think that claiming a "dot-com" four years prior to the initial release of NCSA Mosaic is absurd. If we're going to contort definitions THAT far, then the first dot-com was probably on Prodigy or Compuserve or maybe even BBS'es in the 1970's.
While I respect and appreciate this post contributor's involvement in the EFF... this particular conversation seems like an awfully self-serving attempt to shoehorn "inventor of the dot-com" onto a resume, a la Al Gore and his infamous "creation of the Internet". Templeton COULD have a claim to this title, but it would feel far more legitimate if he had someone else making the "nomination" as opposed to all the extremely vigorous self-promotion.
There's a reason why Google's search-ranking algorithm works the way it does... because your legitimacy as a public figure depends on how many OTHER people are talking about you, rather than how many words you spew yourself. If you want to move to the top of the heap, you need to use a link farm (i.e. having some other people write stuff like this to Slashdot on your behalf).
Before the Web existed, and I love his brag that he "got around" Fair Use... as though that were something to brag about.
Meanwhile, I thought the real opening gun was Canter & Siegel's Green Card spam of 1994
"Oh, no, there's no community here, this is just fallow ground that we can do whatever we want, wherever we want to do it".
mark
By 1989, I'd already been posting on the internet for 5 years! Back then my email address was:
...{ decvax!linus | seismo!harvard }!axiom!gts
That is, decvax was a well known location so you'd have to route through all the machines from you to decvax (which you'd presumably know), then on to linus, then axiom, then my account. If you didn't know how to get to decvax, you could also start at seismo. There were about 2 dozen well-known locations, and lists were published on how to route between them.
When I tell the kids today that at one time email addresses didn't have '@' signs, they think I'm cracked. Was it the good old days? Not really, but there was no spam!
Being first is overrated anyway. Maybe those of us who were laid off after the Individual-Desktop Data merger could be considered the very first victims of the dot-com bust...
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.