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How do you guys remember the early days of the internet? What do you miss about it? (tim.kicker.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Wanted to ask you about this article, how do you remember the early days of the internet (I was sadly too young at that time). Do you wish it back? And do you think it can ever be like that again? I would be very interested

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[–] NABDad 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

People talk about the early days of the Internet, then only go back as far as the world wide web.

There was Internet before Web servers.

When I think of the early Internet, I'm usually thinking of USENET. Posting a question about a Linux device driver not working, getting an answer back from the guy who wrote it, and then him fixing it to work with your hardware.

If I think of the early web, it was very exciting. Mosaic was the browser, and HTML was clean. Briefly, it was almost pure information and untainted by profit motive.

Anyone with a server on the Internet (an extremely exclusive group) could install a web server and start their own site. It was very populist among the privileged few who could participate.

There were assholes. There are always assholes. But there were very few stupid assholes. The nature of the early Internet meant there was a certain threshold you had to cross before you had access. Then, AOL came, and stupid assholes arrived.

It's been downhill ever since.

Now GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Edit: typo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@NABDad @Provider
Do you remember alt.flames? Not only were there assholes, there were glorified assholes.

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