EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet circa 1994 | Hacker News Reader

EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet circa 1994

whitman.edu

82 pointstodsacerdoti18 comments

I tried all the entries under the `telnet` section. Interestingly, one of them still works!

    telnet india.colorado.edu 13

Still gives the current time!

Interesting that the WWW gets only 2 pages, and is described as "a system that bears playing with".

1994 was still pretty early on for the web. This timeline of web browsers, which is very well done btw, illustrates the clients that were available at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_web_browsers. And I'd say the timeline does not tell the full story, since many of the early browsers were on hardware that was not common (e.g., the original launch was on Next and other early browsers were on AIX).

I remember my email address was in that big book of email addresses which was published circa. 1994.

Do you still have it?

I have neither that email address nor the book.

This looks sort of like Yahoo when it was a hand-curated collection of Links.

love that you had to check the schedule of the place you wanted to visit, most were only open between certain hours

Here's my guide to the internet circa 1984:

- get a 2400 baud modem, terminal, TCP/IP, PPP and zip software

- be a student, know a student or hassle your local university

- learn the Unix or VMS CLI for the account you got

- learn mail, ftp and uucp

I'm sure it's a typo, but this article is from 1994, not 1984. 2400 baud (not bps) modems, PPP and Zip files didn't exist in 1984

The 1984 version would be how to use kermet.

No I'm talking about 1984. But yes I did get it that wrong. It was just a terminal, and I really can't remember what speed the modem was.

It was such a long time ago it's all a blur.

Agree. (1994, not 84 tho.).

Add to your learning list: Usenet reader, Gopher, and Archie.

1994 had the web. That's what is was actually like in 1984.

Yes, 1993 was the year everything changed. Mosaic was released, online services started connecting to the internet, the new Vice President was pushing the "Information Superhighway", and people (the media) were listening and repeating it far more widely than when he was a senator. Eternal September occurred, websites like Bloomberg came online, Wired launched, and the internet was no longer a niche thing but the future.

By 1994 usage exploded and companies like Apple and Microsoft launched websites, Media outlets like the Telegraph, BBC and the Economist started making content, various international governments had a presence, and web commerce picked up -- you could subscribe to Britannica, you could buy pizza and flowers, and some random guy called "Jeff Bezos" started a new internet company, as did now-defunct sites like Yahoo and Lycos, and The internet was talked about on prime time TV in the UK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZ5STahhPE)

I didn't touch the internet until 1994, but my feeling is that the internet of 1984 was very different to that of 1994

Yahoo isn’t dead anymore than RadioSnack is…they’re just not obvious anymore…and most people don’t go there…

To me it doesn't seem that different. Downloading software, (cough) images, and documentation using ftp, reading news and discussions from uucp or nntp is much the same as stuff on the web, it's just a different interface.

The novelty and magic was being able to do it in the first place. Obviously the speed, scale and variety is different, but the basics remain the same: it's bits over a pipe with global reach.

This was closer to 1990 than 1984, but I knew several high school kids in the 90's who "hassled" the local universities. This involved breaking into student accounts, downloading the unshadowed password files (anyone remember SunOS, NIS, ypcat passwd?), and then cracking them, often on the university's own systems. All this just so they could be on IRC all night.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com