Internet 1.0?

I’m sitting and wondering this morning what on earth I did during Internet 1.0 (i.e. before it was fashionable to call it Web, and give it a version number). I can recall fansites dedicated to Buffy, my very own Geocities account, random flash games and ad-overkill Yahoo!Mail, but that all seems a little… well, lacking.

Do tell, what was the net for you before blogs & bit torrent, before gmail, googlepages and flickr?

17 Replies to “Internet 1.0?”

  1. ICQ, Starcraft clan who pwned them all, Diablo and then MSN. Also cracks and patches.

    I agree Nathan, simpler times, less leet speak, more fun.

  2. Haha, I don’t even remember what I did online. I vaguely remember my in-netscape email account and searching for pictures. I had a few aol homepage emails to put pictures on…. oh. Why of course, the net for me, if it counts, was AOL instant messenger. That’s when I made a site then a blog to collect my links… and the story goes from there…

  3. – AIM (AOL Messenger)
    – ICQ (with AIM at 3~4am in the morning)
    – about 6 up-to-date emails (at the time) because I couldn’t decide on a tag name I liked…
    – Natalie Portman fansite (made the top 10, came to my senses and took it down and got flooded by fanboy emails…LOL THAT WAS A MEMORY)
    – Utopia
    – having the beginnings of a blog/journal (1998), letting everyone read my life happenings and then being asked about them at school the next day and wondering why people knew so much…LOL
    – and good ol’ warez…hehe

  4. heh, looks like everyone had a pretty similar early net experience… I guess the next question is, from the above, it seems like Web 2.0 is a whole lot less interactive… would you agree?

  5. Weekend TV = teh suck. I’d say Web2.0 is just as interactive. Forums and blog comments are more common. You could say the RATE of interaction is slower.

    I would say though that more teenage angst is being made public, given the explosion of blog numbers. It’s almost as if the ‘net itself is becoming a teenager.

  6. I wouldn’t say it’s less interactive, for me at least. I’ve moved from icq to msn, and from chat rooms to messageboards – essentially I’m still stuck in web 1.5. ;) Certainly web 2.0 seems more concerned with interactivity with software rather than people, but the people always find a way to communicate. Even your humble blog, initially a one-person journal of thoughts and ideas, has expanded to become a makeshift community for us. It’s one of the reasons I’ve thought a collaborative blog between a few of us would work so well, since we essentially comment amongst ourselves anyway.

  7. I would absolutely love to do a collaborative blog! Be a whole heap of fun =)

    I did invite guest contributions here once, but no-one took me up on the offer… ^_^

  8. Yeah, it’s basically “KARAN’S BLOG + invited guests” rather than “random collection of MHS old boys and some other people too blog”.

  9. well if it’s an invitation, it’s not exactly an “invasion of space”, now is it? anyway, I think the point was just to get the ball rolling on the idea. dunno.

  10. Well, wordpress is explicitly set up for that kinda thing. I’d have no problems with it. although I notice Nathan hasn’t exactly been doing his bit on his own blog :P

  11. I’ve been having some serious lack of inspiration and motivation for a while. I’ll probably start up again soon.

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