The Internet 10 Years Ago - Remembered

My family got the internet around 1997. I remember the day when my dad dished out a ton of money to put in a 56k modem into our computer. When we received the internet, I remember not knowing what to do with it. But over time of course, I learned, and I haven't stopped since.

Here is a list of a few things I remember from the internet when I first got it. Perhaps some of you can relate to it.

Seeing What Websites Existed

I remember grabbing regular packages around the house and looking up any kind of website I could. I remember testing URLs to see if a site even existed. Our computer was so bad at the time, the internet froze after looking at one page. So I had to write down URL links, close the browser, and start again using the new link URL.

The Dancing Baby

This was a 3D studio max creation in 1996. It swept the internet shortly after. I remember spending time downloading this thing and watching it and thinking it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. It still is pretty cool, looking back at it.

AOL Search

AOL was not our internet service provider, we had our internet locally. However, that was what I use to use back then to search up websites.

Poorly Done Websites

Some websites today still suck, even if they're new. However, do you remember how most websites had bright flashy backgrounds, midi music in the background, and you had to scroll down page after page to read the whole site? It was terrible compared to what we have today.

Waiting 2 hours to download an 8 minute video

When the internet came to my family household, Titanic was popular at the time. I remember loving the movie so much that I would go online just to download small clips and trailers from the movie. Eventually I did this for a lot of films, but I distinctly remember doing it a lot for Titanic footage

Message Boards as Chat rooms

There were probably a few chat rooms out there at the time that has some streaming chats, but I never was able to get into those. Instead a lot of chat rooms I did were basically message boards or forums people constantly were replying in. There were lots of "rooms" to choose from, and the only way you could see if someone replied to the chat was if you hit the refresh button on your browser.

Creating My First Personal E-mail Account

To this day I still have this account, and use this as my main messenger account as well. However I probably have added a few more e-mail accounts in my day on top of that. I still check them all, and they keep improving over time.

Bored.com

I use to spend a lot of time on this website. It looks very different now than it use to. It's got a lot more links than it ever use to, and still some of the same ones, such as Virtual Flowers and Crush Finder Prank. The site use to just have a single list going down the page.

It will be interesting to see how different the internet will be 10 years from now. Maybe somehow the clutter, scams, and terrible sites will flood it so bad that it'll be just a miserable place to be. Or maybe things will be nicer than they are now. Right now, virtually anything can be posted and found on the internet. I am more interested to see if there will some day be some kind of a universal system on the internet that everyone can log into the same screen, and have a very organized thing. I happen to like a little chaos, it's like a messy desk where you can still find anything you want.