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Techno-Nostalgia

19:23 Mon 31 Mar 2008
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I didn’t really take part, but apparently today was Run Some Old Web Browsers Day. I think my first exposure to a Web browser would have been around 1994, although the first time I could really play around with one was in a Humboldt University computer lab, I think, and that would have been 1995. Before that I was restricted to ftp and gopher, but was never that into either of them. I think I have some email from a little earlier than that.

I’m pretty sure that the HU lab machine was running HP-UX, and that the browser was Netscape Navigator 2. Things have obviously come a long way since then, but I don’t really feel there’s been an exponential leap, just lots of people taking advantage of what the Internet offers conceptually.

The real “leap” was probably the crossover between networking machines over large distances (the classic Internet, in other words, that arose from ARPANet), and computing becoming so cheap that it was really easy for most Western households to have or get access to them. The meeting of those two things is what resulted in the ongoing march of the online world.

Bonus from the comments on jwz’s thread: 1968′s idea of the networked future.

One Response to “Techno-Nostalgia”

  1. Eoin Says:

    So THATS how this intarweb thingamajigger works!

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