Question
What was it like to browse the Web in the nineties?
Answer
What's with all this nostalgic romanticization? Especially given that those who are capable of writing answers here aren't even like 50 yet for the most part, and are writing answers that make them sound 90?
Short answer: it was really crappy, almost to the point of not being worth using at all, and is far better now. Things didn't get good till Google.
I first got online in 1994. It was painful, slow and boring and the content you got for your mighty efforts via your thin slice of the access pie was crappy. It was like reading a telephone directory for the most part. I don't recall ever getting really into reading something on Lynx. Usenet was full of smug bores who thought they were special and "pioneers" just because they were on a new medium. Gopher was full of random data that was mostly useless. Letter writing was a more rewarding activity than email.
And that annoying dial-up modem tone??? Seriously? It's a sacred, "song of the primordial cyber universe" now, that people wistfully reminisce about? To me it was the grating sound of hell. I am glad I never have to hear it again.
For the most part, I didn't find the "Internet" worth going to.
The Web is MUCH better now. Like 1,000,000 times better. Far smarter people, creating far better content, and engaging in far healthier/broader/more interesting social discourses. Not to mention MUCH less full of themselves.
The Web honestly did not really start to get good until Google and hamster dance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham...
Hamster Dance
I think there's a core bunch of annoying, self-styled "pioneer" types who have built their personal identities around the "good old days," are in mutual admiration societies to this day, and have convinced everybody that the early online years were somehow sacred and special (USENET, the WELL etc.) and that the people involved were smarter, holier, and overall better human beings, doing more exalted things in a Garden of Eden. That the old days were a golden age of sorts.
All false. EVERYTHING about being online has gotten better. The original "pioneer" world was just a bunch of fairly average people doing/saying fairly average things, in fairly unpleasant surroundings, using pretty poor/annoying tools. It was no Garden of Eden. More like a bunch of slugs writhing around in primordial slime.
Short answer: it was really crappy, almost to the point of not being worth using at all, and is far better now. Things didn't get good till Google.
I first got online in 1994. It was painful, slow and boring and the content you got for your mighty efforts via your thin slice of the access pie was crappy. It was like reading a telephone directory for the most part. I don't recall ever getting really into reading something on Lynx. Usenet was full of smug bores who thought they were special and "pioneers" just because they were on a new medium. Gopher was full of random data that was mostly useless. Letter writing was a more rewarding activity than email.
And that annoying dial-up modem tone??? Seriously? It's a sacred, "song of the primordial cyber universe" now, that people wistfully reminisce about? To me it was the grating sound of hell. I am glad I never have to hear it again.
For the most part, I didn't find the "Internet" worth going to.
The Web is MUCH better now. Like 1,000,000 times better. Far smarter people, creating far better content, and engaging in far healthier/broader/more interesting social discourses. Not to mention MUCH less full of themselves.
The Web honestly did not really start to get good until Google and hamster dance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham...
Hamster Dance
I think there's a core bunch of annoying, self-styled "pioneer" types who have built their personal identities around the "good old days," are in mutual admiration societies to this day, and have convinced everybody that the early online years were somehow sacred and special (USENET, the WELL etc.) and that the people involved were smarter, holier, and overall better human beings, doing more exalted things in a Garden of Eden. That the old days were a golden age of sorts.
All false. EVERYTHING about being online has gotten better. The original "pioneer" world was just a bunch of fairly average people doing/saying fairly average things, in fairly unpleasant surroundings, using pretty poor/annoying tools. It was no Garden of Eden. More like a bunch of slugs writhing around in primordial slime.