A simple rant of the history of the internet from the POV of a mint wolf.

Random Access Memory

I remember my first computer.
That beautiful beige box. I don’t remember the model… but I’m pretty sure it was an IBM. My step-dad used to work in tech way back in the day and with most corpos in tech ended up in management so he didn’t need a deep skill set. This meant that I was watching when something was going wrong, making mental notes, and fixing the issue when I was just a little one. Honestly I was so enamored with tech I would sit there for hours watching someone else use a computer. I guess I’d never escape the IT work I do today.

ASCII Age

I remember being fascinated that we could take digital delving into our own hands. The very first network connectivity with the world I remember was Prodigy. For only being text-based net it was incredible. Hell, porn had already found its home in this new medium with ASCII art of Penthouse models.

Early internet said log in before accessing!

For me it was something out of a dream. During this time phone line providers were king. Who could go up against the quickest way to connect with anyone? Bell South probably never saw it coming.

I’m glossing over a ton with Prodigy, party because early memories are fuzzy at times. But I’m thankful as it helped me love text based GUI. It’s pretty much an art form in my eyes. The next major breakthrough technology came much later with AOL creating a more accessible web by adding keywords. Somehow we still seem to use keywords today but AOL is long dead.

You’ve got mail!

At this point, computing was more of a hobbyist thing rather than an actual major career. Looking back, early 90s Internet definitely felt that we brought science fiction to life. Imagine getting all the information you ever wanted by just asking for it! Of course it came with the cost of having to use up your phone line and god forbid if someone was on the phone when you wanted to surf.

Can you believe this was the first consumer internet interface?

There was a lot of effort on TV (the popular medium of the time) to get people online and surf. Especially when it came to entertainment – keywords brought people together and added more information than they were used to having at the tips of their fingers. Along with AOL came online chat rooms that gave access to people who didn’t need to be full time computer hobbyist to get up and running. It was truly something to behold in its time.

Taking in the Netscape

Beyond the big names of the early age of the web we finally started seeing an age about you the user. Cute ideas came up and began making pages to play games and feed pets. There were dancing babies and memes weren’t even defined yet.

Free omelet in this economy???

This is when I finally started going online on my own. I would spend days just going through the Neopets site. Exploring as if I was an unmedicated kid with ADHD and curiosity abounding. (Oh wait I was!)

At first I had just spent time gaming and having fun. Then I started to explore player shops. These bad boys had so much to learn from. You see back then we didn’t have an algorithm, feed, or social media to tell people about your digital items – you had to paint up the page itself and hope for a consistent customer base.

With that began my journey into HTML. I wanted a shop page that shined. I didn’t care so much about selling things to get neobucks. I just wanted to have a cool background, fun text effects, and gifs!

I wasn’t alone in this as I remember spending time in chat rooms with other kids in neopets. Trying to figure it all out. Some people would copy what they found but I would tinker away. I had time and I had energy.

The internet was just this living, breathing thing for us. A new world. Many shows started having topics about the net. Reboot made me want to live inside of a computer and kick ass all day at video games.

I write this article because I want people to remember the internet used to belong to us.

I hope to write more in this series soon. Thanks for reading!