Amazing New Technology

jonesy · Nov 17, 2012

I bring you: The Internet!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XluovrUA6Bk[/ame]

Can you imagine? Electronic mail! Wow. But seriously, I was just looking at stuff on Youtube and came across videos from Computer Chronicles, a tv show that apparantly ran all the way to 2002. It's really interesting looking at this now. I do have to say that the show seems to have been surprisingly well informed about its topics.

Joker · Nov 17, 2012

I don't know if this is ever gonna catch on. I mean, it's a quaint little exercise in engineering but I don't see it moving out of the lab in a meaningful way. Writing letters is so ingrained in our way of going about business that I think the post-offices will remain strong for many many decades to come.

Janx · Nov 17, 2012

wow. that's a blast from the past.

people used applications like Eudora to read their e-mail, rather than off a website like Gmail or Hotmail.

ARCHY and FTP were how people found programs to download. Nowadays, you use a web site to search (google) and download files and content off a website from that search.

Normal folks had to use Compuserve or AOL to get online, rather than connect directly to an ISP and just a web browser. This meant AOL or Compuserve would wrap the web with their interfaces, often supplying (and charging for) redundant services that the web can do without (like email, or search).

Discussion groups were based on USENET. Nowadays, every other website has its own forum software instead.

Web pages were ugly as crap. They usually used the default font and background color. Layout was terrible. Part of this was due to bandwidth limitations. Really fancy layout tended to be graphics heavy, which would make the page slow to download.

Even the HTML editor of the day, HoTMetaL was clunky and unintuitive as it still clung to the literal definitions of the syntax, rather than what you get today to make some text bold or set some text as a hyperlink with a button off the button bar.

Gosh, those were the days....

Aeolius · Nov 17, 2012

1995: I became a TSRO on TSR's AOL Forum and started my first online game, a play-by-post. That was like yesterday, right?

Aaron L · Nov 17, 2012

Wow, that brings back some memories. It's weird watching it now. I didn't get an Internet capable computer til '97, but there wasn't much difference. Most of my time was spent either using Eudora to participate in the Delta Green mailing List, or playing MechWarrior 2 on M-Player (whoah that really brings back old memories. Go Clan Greybear!)

And then, in 1998, my friends and I were introduced to a little game called EverQuest, and soon after that I discovered a little website by a man named Eric Noah about the upcoming 3rd Edition of D&D, and the world was never the same. The Internet seemed to just expand exponentially and was everywhere after that.

Ah, back in the day when it was still mostly just us geeks online, even if the norms were starting to catch on about that time.

Man in the Funny Hat · Nov 18, 2012

Yeah, right. Next thing you'll tell me is that I don't even need a monitor or a box on my desktop and that I'll be able to carry around a little 8x10 thing like on Star Trek and do all of that without even plugging in a cable.

It's a pipe dream.

darjr · Nov 18, 2012

I used to watch that show all the time. I really miss it.

Aeolius · Nov 19, 2012

wrong forum

deleted post.. wrong forum

GMforPowergamers · Nov 20, 2012

Man in the Funny Hat said:
Yeah, right. Next thing you'll tell me is that I don't even need a monitor or a box on my desktop and that I'll be able to carry around a little 8x10 thing like on Star Trek and do all of that without even plugging in a cable.

It's a pipe dream.

I remember the old tsr on AOL... And thinking how nothing could get better then that

Typed on my iPhone well at work