Happy 20th birthday internet!

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Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 8:17 am

Well, what the title says, Internet today celebrates 20 years of its existence. Smile

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 8:48 am

For some people 20 years ago they had a life. Wink

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 8:48 am

And what next? Haven't we already seen this Inter-Webs thingy?

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:20 am

Now just wait until Corona shows up in this thread and quickly leaves.

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 11:02 am

I guess the first web browser and HTML are 1990/1991-ish, but that so denies the awesomeness of Gopher, etc which predate the WWW Smile

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 1:57 pm

Only 5 years older than Olly Wink

Happy birthday www.

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 4:18 pm

Ah, but what about the miracle of prodigy.com, which pre-dated the www? How well I remember: I went to the computer store and bought a kit for more than I could comfortably afford, which included a 5" floppy disc with software and a miraculous (and large) 2400kbs modem to plug into the phone line. And shazam! I could send messages to anyone else who was on prodigy! There were message boards, weather reports, airline reservations (only for one single airline, however) and other miracles. But it was a closed circle, there was no way to reach outside of it. It took a long time after email was becoming widespread before Prodigy finally got connected and it became possible to contact anyone who wasn't also a prodigy subscriber.

Hard to believe that prodigy.com, which no longer exists, was once the second biggest name in personal online services, even before AOL.

More here.

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 4:55 pm

Meh... It's a passing fad. It'll never catch on.

Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 9:49 pm

Juan Freizwidatt wrote:

2400kbs modem

How primitive. My first modem moved at a blazing 9600kbs.

I also had Prodigy, which eventually offered a gateway to the World Wide Web. I remember warnings about stumbling onto porn sites. Nothing about scammers, though.

Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 8:07 am

My first modem did 1200 bps down, 300 up! Used it on BBS systems. Later (still pre-internet time) I moved to Compuserve (which apparently still exists today!).

Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 2:21 pm

Quote:

prodigy.com

Oh, what memories. I used to be a rep for prodigy and helped them in local advertising.

Our eventual modem was 1200 baud having started out at 300, then 600 baud. We used a Tandy TL and had no hard drive. I "modemed" on three BBS's as we called them. Only one person could be on the BBS at one time and using dial up and hoping you could get on the BBS if someone had logged off.

419Eater is my life Joined: 07 Apr 2006 Posts: 441

How lame. My first "modem" was an acoustic connector where you had to plug your telephone onto some rubber things, and it did 300bps. Of course you had to dial manually (on your telephone). I remember this was quite a sohpisticated item, as none of my friends had one at that time, and they were quite skeptical as to what sense it would make to connect one computer to another.

Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 4:34 pm

^ Modems are overestimated. Still using this gem, proven technology. Well, most of the time anyway, depending on the operator's skills. The good ones get me 3 bps. The bad side is having a sore throat at the end of the day shouting binary code at them. 00111010 01101100 01101111 01101100 00111010

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 4:58 pm

Walks in, walks out..... Laughing

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 6:40 pm

Walks away before I get lectured about being the 3rd youngest member here.

Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 10:27 pm

Quote:

Though the Internet itself has existed since 1969, it was with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee and its implementation in 1991 that the Internet truly became a global network.

Was just thinking that I had fun with a modem way earlier than that.
Can you imagine what a lot of spare time you had then Smile

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 7:16 pm

I thought the internet was the mesh in my swim trunks. I communicate with the world using this little reed looking thing, and a specialized combination of beeps and boops.

in fact, we sing songs through it, the most popular one being "Sending out a dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit-dit-dit" by the Police.

edit: Fixed a horrible typo

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 1:56 am

A futurist's view of the internet -- in 1969!

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/06/the-internet-in-1969/

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:24 pm

^^^ Ah, QVC in its earliest form!!!!! Laughing

** SUSPENDED ** Joined: 25 Aug 2011 Posts: 4

awesome time loop.. the interweb is now a twin of the internets! Soon both will be able to drink whatever the OP has.
Shocked

break out the cutting edge sms capable devices to celebrate IRC and google plus woohoo

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