 I think I have been on the internet for 33 years now. 1990 sounds about right. The original wow factor for me was Usenet. You could just run this app — it wasn’t called an app then — on a close Apollo workstation, in my case, and have these incredibly knowledgeable discussions on arcane subjects you’d never find anybody in real life to talk about, and with people around the world. For free, too! If you were patient because I think for about 30 people we had one 9600 baud line. 13 comments
@J12t I miss the days of USENET. There was a magic to it that has been lost, though Mastodon seems to channel the occasional flash of it now and again. @Wildbill I think it was a very special (and privileged) set of people at that pre-web Usenet time who suddenly, like me, found a tribe of like-minded people they couldn’t have imagined existed. The fediverse today in many ways has the same demographics I think. It’s less group-focused though, not sure whether this is good or bad. @J12t Absolutely. I remember stumbling into just the amateur radio section of USENET and losing my mind with the conversations and tips that were there. Folks used to write up guides on how to modify gear even! (I may have penned one of those at one point.) @Wildbill I recall finding a group of people to play a game of Nomic with. Not something that’s likely to happen IRL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic Of course I lost. @J12t I *just* stumbled on this article, too... https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/30/usenet_revival/  @J12t Back in those days, I had business acquaintance with UseNet heavy, Jim Rutt (later CEO of Verisign and coiner of ‘snail mail.”) He used to say something like, “Usenet is where it’s at. We just don’t know where that is just yet.” Younger nerds may enjoy some of these particulars about Usenet and its earliest incarnation of ‘newsgroups.’ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771354 @shoq I'm going to borrow this quote and adjust it for the times: "The #Fediverse is where it's at. We just don't know where that is just yet." @shoq The Fediverse proudly takes over where Usenet left it: not knowing where it's at for 40 years and counting! @shoq Maybe we should file a pull request against Mastodon, to put it on the sign-up page :-) |
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@J12t yeah, Usenet in 1990 was what woke me up to the potential of the Internet.