socialmedian: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

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Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Source: Mashable!

Oct 29, 2009

Summary

I remember when I first saw it. My dad called me over to his office, where he had a x86 PC with a 1200 bit/s modem, which I’d mostly used for games (I was 15 at the time) and connecting to various BBS’. He said: there’s this new thing, they call it the Internet. I think it’ll be really important.

What can you do with it, I asked? You can see what’s on other computers, far away, he said. You can do it via Gopher, or FTP, or Cello (the predecessor of today’s WWW browsers). There wasn’t a lot to see there, so I quickly moved onto other things, but soon after that day, a new way to browse the Internet came out: Netscape.

And suddenly, the Internet became great. I could find out about games and bands I’d never heard of before. I could see what the weather is like in South Dakota. I could create a personal page (that’s what people did on the Internet before blogs came to be) with my biography and picture for everyone to see. I jumped on the train and never looked back.

The real beginning was a couple of decades earlier, although no one can really set the exact date

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