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Today's Poll: The web is 25 years old. How long since you first logged on?

By Howard B. Owens
Kyle Couchman

Do we count the days when we used to use our modems to call up local BBS services? ( bbs was bulletin board services that local computer guys used to maintain as social media exchanges)
Or is that considered the internet vs the world wide web?

Mar 13, 2014, 8:20am Permalink
Lincoln DeCoursey

I don't recall the exactly when I first used the web, but it was definitely new and just starting to displace gopher and ftp as the main interactive protocol on the Internet. If I recall correctly, the web browser that I used at the time was lynx. I did not have an IP stack on my local computer so I had been dialing up the ISP using Telix, a terminal emulator that allowed me to connect to a Unix system which was on the Internet.

I had also participated in the amateur BBS networks such as FidoNet that others have mentioned. These were not the Internet but were hobbyist networks operating in parallel to the Internet during the period when Internet access was available only to universities, government, etc. In many ways the FidoNet-technology networks worked similarly to how the very early Internet had worked over UUCP links, on a sort-of store-and-forward basis where most sites connected to each other over dial-up links. Not all sites were directly connected so there was a lot of cooperative relaying of messages.

In some ways I'm sad about what the web has done to the Internet. The internet used to flourish with varied protocols such as NNTP, IRC, TALK, FINGER, and others which were all suited to a purpose. To an extent these things still exist, but most users are unaware and actually couldn't distinguish the web (one particular application) from the Internet (the underlying network which provides the connectivity).

Mar 13, 2014, 10:01am Permalink
tom hunt

Believe it or not, I still have customers who live in rural areas that still use dial up modems as their main communication channel. I use to get a lot of service calls after every Summer thunderstorm. The lightening strikes would hit the telephone lines and take out the modem card. I still maintain modem service to trouble shoot the occasional dial up modem problem.

Mar 13, 2014, 10:38am Permalink
Bea McManis

I remember having subscribe in order to do searches. Those searches took forever to complete and they were costly. Today, the same are free, take seconds to get, and there is no need to use Boolean logic to get exactly what you need. I remember the first beta test we did for online conferencing between our facility in NYC and Philadelphia. We ran into problems because of the old telephone lines between the two cities. Who remembers using IRC and does anyone use AIM anymore?.

Mar 13, 2014, 10:56am Permalink
Doug Yeomans

I used, and still use IRC (mIRC). A friend of mine maintains his own chat server in Austin, Texas, and a few of us that have never met in person have been talking with each other for years.

For years in the 90's I used to talk to people from all over the world (good ol' dalnet on IRC), and some of them I even met in person.

Bea, I used AIM for a long time and I remember using ICQ, too. I can remember when ICQ was brand new. Later, I used pidgin ported for Windows so that I could have one chat program covering multiple platforms. I still have pidgin installed but rarely even open it.

The internet was a lot of fun back then, and it wasn't overrun by kids. PC's were expensive and it was mostly adults that were using it. I loved being able to talk to my mom and dad whenever I wanted while I was at work, which was something I wouldn't have ever been able to do without the web. I would park a laptop or a spare desktop PC on the fax line at work (shhhhh don't tell) and keep in contact with many people that way. It got me through endless nights of isolation in the office when I was working a rotating shift. I could play cards (euchre) on playsite or play scrabble on on a gaming site. I actually kind of miss the wild west days of the internet.

Oh, and lets not forget about napster in its hay day!

Mar 13, 2014, 4:55pm Permalink
Scott Ogle

IRC was a great technology -- mIRC made it even greater. I enjoyed it more than Facebook now, but IRC seems to have atrophied -- old contacts are gone, and the only ones I find on board -- I'd rather not find on board.

Mar 13, 2014, 5:02pm Permalink
Doug Yeomans

Yeah Scott, IRC was powerful..way ahead of its time for social networking. My friend that maintains his own server is a system admin (one of many) for the U of T in Austin. It's all a bunch of geeks that hang there, one of them living in Japan (from Texas originally)
.

Mar 13, 2014, 5:18pm Permalink
Bob Harker

Spent a couple hours after work every night connecting to BBS's @ 1200 baud. Sgt's Canteen was my favorite.

8088 CPUs, 360K floppies, DOS, 512K and 20 meg discs were the norm. With the tiny green screen.

copy con
autoexec.bat

The good old days! Anybody remember Amstrad? And we all knew that the upstart apple with the graphical interface would never catch on.

Mar 13, 2014, 8:58pm Permalink

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