Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: How I came to love the Internet (again)
Author: Jason Levine Posted: 3/23/1999; 7:02:50 AM Topic: the first time i ever saw... Msg #: 4401 (In response to 4400) Prev/Next: 4400 / 4403
I started using the Internet (although it wasn't called that then!) in 1988-1989. My parents' university had a BitNET connection (remember all those percent signs in addresses?) on a VAX machine, and dialup access for people at home. About the only thing to do was play with MUDs (Multi-User Domains, or some derivative thereof) -- essentially, telnet sessions into a server, where you could participate in multi-player role-playing games. Even then, though, they were mostly used for chatting; everyone would find "rooms" to hang out in (i.e., when you enter, go north twice, then west once, then down, then south twice) and just talk about stuff.I also remember when I first saw the Web -- I was fortunate enough to be at a school with in-room terminal access (albeit over serial lines running through the PBX system). I was able to get running a beta version of Mosaic, and everything was all grey, with no formatting to speak of and not much content. Within a month or two, the school let us know that they had a central web server running, and that all of our terminal accounts had potential public_html directories in which we could (*gasp*) serve our own content. At that point, I knew that this would be something that would eventually change the world -- people could, with minimal expertise, serve content to the WORLD.
Coooool.
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