Arriving Somewhere

Ten years ago this week Netscape went public. This introduced the general public to the web, and the world was never the same again.

The Belfast Telegraph has an article today titled “Ten Years of the Net” in which they summarize big internet related events. While Anglo-centric, it was fun to read and remember what I was doing back then. I think my first introduction to the web came in a conversation with a cousin who’s father worked for Hewlett-Packard. He was describing CompuServe and I have to admit, I was puzzled. I was already familiar with computer networks from my time at an Apple grant school in junior high, but networking over phone lines? That was the realm of the military and sci-fi movies.

I believe 1996 was the year my family subscribed to AOL (14.4k modem I think?) and it was all over after that. Surfing Yahoo for house-rules for a strategy game I played with my high school buddies and chatting online was the order of the day. In 1997 my father and I were a couple of the 46 million hits on NASA’s website when Pathfinder sent pictures back from Mars. Later that year I also began my foray into building websites and HTML. My first website (hosted on Geocities) was dedicated to the Sega Genesis.

A few months ago a flash video popped up in the blogosphere called “EPIC 2015.” It is a fake documentary set in the future when Google and Amazon merge and take over the world. Very slick. You can get it here.

technorati tag: Netscape, internet, www