tbc0's posterous

I should be writing other things today, but some friends on Facebook are getting all nostalgic about the early days of the Web. That set me off like a dog after a squirrel, and here I am. Didn't help that yesterday I saw a tweet mentioning an article commemorating a website that went up 20 years ago. I responded to that with a tweet of my own, but now I see I was off by a year. (I forgot I'd written about my introduction to the Web on Google+ six months ago.) So now I'm going to write my little story once and for all. It all started nearly 31 years ago [1]...

I was issued an account on a computer with Internet access in January, 1981. I was a freshman at MIT studying Computer Science and Engineering. I explored what one could do with the Internet. It was basically file sharing and email. I subscribed to mailing lists. That's the only social medium we had. There were a couple years after I graduated that I lost Internet access, although I could dial-up my MIT account via modem from work. We were sending email via UUCP (UNIX to UNIX copy). HP Labs was on the Internet. In the late 80's I persuaded our HP division to connect to the Internet through the Labs.

In the early 90's I subscribed to the HPCWire newsletter, distributed via email. Tim O'Reilly was the publisher. He announced the Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993. That's when I became aware of the Web's existence. GNN said you had to download this thing called Mosaic to experience it. I stayed up all night and surfed the entire Web, including every Yahoo link. That's how small the Web was.

[1] I have one earlier story about being in middle school and having teletype access to an HP 3000 minicomputer. Thanks to my grandmother, a photo survives. I'll blog about that after I scan it.