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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