What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
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What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#2"Who says online users are a bunch of anti-social geeks?"
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#3How it looked some years later:
http://divshot.github.io/geo-bootstrap/
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#4I'm not one to usually watch videos online, but this one is well worth watching.
Check out around 5:00 when they start describing the first live band to stream a concert online--a group of geeks from Xerox PARC in Palo Alto! And one of them, in the interview, says "If 100 bands tried to do [live streaming] at the same time, disaster would ensue. It may not be possible to do what we did in another couple years."
But perhaps my favorite part was right at the beginning, when they're talking about "electronic mail." John Markoff from the NY Times casually shows his email inbox..."Here's a message I got from Steve Jobs, for example." (!)
Markoff admits even then that email was hard to keep up with: "When you're in my position, you get hundreds or even thousands of messages each day..." And he shows off his fancy new Eudora "filters" that he's using to make his inbox usable.
Great piece of history...and it really shows how far we've come in under 20 years. I doubt any one of them would have predicted that the #1 Billboard hit in 2013 would come from a Korean band that no one had heard of...until they put a music video online that got over 1.4 billion views. Breathtaking, and it makes me excited for the next 20 years and whatever we're going to come up with next.
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#5I will always treasure the fact that I grew up with the internet during these times. Yes, even the old geocities pages. It truly was a "new frontier," and not everyone gets to experience something like that. It was all so exciting. People would come over and we'd just sit around and "play on the internet," trying out different things. Or we'd get some "warez" and think we were "hackers" because we could "punt" people off of AOL...
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#6How it looked some years later: http://divshot.github.io/geo-bootstrap/
This is hilarious.
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#7I'm not one to usually watch videos online, but this one is well worth watching. Check out around 5:00 when they start describing the first live band to stream a concert online--a group of geeks from Xerox PARC in Palo Alto! And one of them, in the interview, says "If 100 bands tried to do [live streaming] at the same time, disaster would ensue. It may not be possible to do what we did in another couple years." But p…
It's interesting how the problem of getting too many emails is still a problem 18 years later and the solution of 'filtering things into different folders' is still the best we can do.
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#8I lived for Computer Chronicles in the 80's, but lost track of it in the 90's (when I didn't have a TV).
This episode on UNIX from 1985 (with a bearded Bill Joy) is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#9Technology has a way of feeling incremental. Think about this past year, what really happened? We got a slightly faster iPhone, Facebook did some interface tweaks, Microsoft released a new version of Windows. These seem like really small improvements. But if you look back to the original iPhone, what Facebook looked like in Zuck's dorm room, or what Windows 3.1 looked like, the change is staggering.
The linked video shows this phenomenon full effect. The internet in the video is slow, clunky, and ugly. How could a page take 30 seconds to load? Why does everything have a murky gray background? The difference between the web of then and now is staggering. But as someone who grew up through the early 90s watching the internet expand, it sure didn't feel like things were changing fast. It happened gradually - companies starting coming online slowly (and often with a very limited presence): nytimes, barnes+noble, moviefone. Then the internet started getting organized better, first with Yahoo's directories, then with search engines like AltaVista, Excite, Lycos. Then, Google came along, gradually improving their algorithm to the point where we can now access almost any piece of the world's information in seconds. In retrospect, there was so much going on during that time period, but living through it didn't feel that way.
More than anything else, I think this is a testament that having a real impact on technology in the long-term is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to have a vision, and incrementally improve on it constantly, even if it feels like you're not accomplishing much in the short term.
Re: What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 [video]
#10Tiny espresso cup? At least Americans had taste back then!