Joshua Marinacci's Blog

You need at least 386 Power

This is some old videos from the early days of the internet. And by videos I mean VHS. Videos from the mid 1990s that taught you about what the internet is and how to use it. Check out the screenshots of Yahoo circa 1995 and the mention of Gopher.

Internet Power, Volume 1: Flashback to the VHS-Era Web

I recall trying to explain the internet to friends and family back then and had trouble describing the scale of it.

Me: It sends files.
Them: so it's like a fax machine?
Me: it sends email.
Them: So it's like the postal system?
Me: It finds things.
Them: So it's like a phone book?
Me: Gaaah!
Them: I don't see what the big deal is.

Of course we now know the Internet is all of those things and more, fundamentally changing the way everything is done. Now I could summarize it as: The Internet is the new electricity.

Comments

• Woo, let's all install HotJava while we're at it!
  Heh... Sun should GPL it :)

  Posted by: hubick on March 18, 2008 at 02:08 PM

• Ha, I ran AOL for DOS on a 286 in those days. A 386 was not necessary ;)

  Posted by: aberrant on March 19, 2008 at 06:59 AM

• cool:) reminds me when we started to play on 286 and internet was a greek village here in CR... it got better in 95' :) now it looks like everything was simple those times :-D

  Posted by: goddard on March 20, 2008 at 12:14 PM

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