Posted on 08/06/2006 9:55:21 AM PDT by fanfan
Things got more interesting after NCSA Mosaic and Netscape 0.9 were released.
I remember I saw the web for the first time while I still lived in Colombia, around 1996. It was painfully slow by today's broadband standards, but it was the $#!+ back then.
My mom bought me my first PC back in '97, when I was in my fifth year of secondary school (middle and high school in Colombia are combined in a 6-year secondary school), and a few months later, in early '98, she got me an internet connection.
I thought it was the bomb.
You think you can do it all, especially in a technologically limited society like 1990's Colombia, and that you have the power.
One curious thing is that I greatly improved my English skills, which I largely learned on my own, all thanks to the web.
And finally, to give you an idea... when my connection speed was up to 2 kb/s, I thought that was lightning fast!!!
Oh, and BTW, my first email client was Eudora... anyone remember it???
"I wonder how many Freepers were aware of the World-Wide-Web 15 years ago."
In 1994, I left the space industry to work for something called an "Electronic Commerce Resource Center." Back then, I described my then-new job as "building the on-ramps to the information superhighway." In 1995 I made a speech to the local chamber of commerce where I predicted that my oldest son -- then in 8th grade -- would be able to access university libraries, around the world, before he graduated from High School.
In 1994-95 I also worked on a team that developed an architecture to make a profit as an Internet Service Provider in a rural area. The model was widely copied -- and probably resulted in rural accessibility to the Internet maybe 2-3 years earlier than it otherwise would have happened.
Those were the days. Alas, in 2001, the music stopped without my having an electronic commerce job to sit in, and I returned to the Space industry in 2002.
I use it at work
"Oh, and BTW, my first email client was Eudora... anyone remember it???"
I still use it. Don't have the virus worries I would have with MS Look Out! err MS Outlook.
"I wonder how many Freepers were aware of the World-Wide-Web 15 years ago."
I was given my first demo of the WWW by a friend in his MIT office in Fall 1993, using NCSA Mosaic 1.0 on SunOS. I nearly fell out of my chair (I believe we first looked at the NOAA web site).
It took about 6 months after Mosaic to convince my company to get a 256Kb fractional T-1, but we had to wait many months to get a browser for Windows and had to use the text-based Lynx browser for a good while.
Ha! That's what I was I going to post. "The Internet is for Porn".
Don't be afraid folks, it's funny, not obscene.
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