Since it's Veeky Forums, let's talk about the internet's history

The Tibetan Empire.

reddit is the Russian Empire then?

Pajeet's street shitting empire.

I was hoping we'd have a discussion about how internet culture was back in the day and how it developed

instead there's shitposting about comparing sites to empires

why do I even bother

user you know this was gonna happen.

cant even remember internet in the 90s.

I do remember net cafes though.

textfiles.com is great for researching BBS history and internet culture in the 80's and early 90's

bibanon.org mostly deals with Veeky Forums and 2chan history. their irc is #bibanon on rizon

archiveteam is also great for overall internet history

I dialed into BBS and usenets starting in 1989.

When websites came around in the early 90s, you could say technically that was when it started resembling our current internet in terms of going to pages and browsing.

However, it was much different then. There were so many less users and those that were there tended to be academic and intelligent, using it to share information.

The biggest thing I remember was how incredibly fast it was to be able to communicate with someone, or learn about news, or to transfer a program or file to someone. It might be hard for younger anons who don't remember much or any of a pre-internet world, but the most simple things now like sharing a picture or being able to google for whatever you could possibly want would either be impossible or take hours or days to accomplish, because things had to be faxed or physically sent to you via the mail.

In the early 2000s the internet became much more common place and pretty much everyone I knew had it. I love what the internet did, but there sure are a lot of stupid people using it now.

I really miss those industrial-strength keyboards. Peripherals these days are always cheap, fragile bullshit that break within a couple of months.

There's no point. No one on Veeky Forums even remembers shit like Usenet, telnet, MUDs, etc. They're all babies.

Remember when anonymity was the rule of the Internet, and not just a couple web sites? No you fucking don't, you dickpic snapchatting hashtagging dumbasses.

There are still plenty of IBM Model Ms around used. Just gotta look for them. There are plenty of similar mechanical keyboards made by modern companies too.

i was a freshman at uni when facebook first came out.

in ~6 years, that first college facebook class will be able to run for president.

our politicians will exist on the same level as southern europe's

[spoiler] it's not a good thing [/spoiler]

Read the sticky fag.

Before the 90's there wasn't much internet to speak of. There were these BBS dial-up boards, and some usenet access, the latter used almost exclusively by universities and a few tech geeks.

An old girlfriend of mine, who was the tech geek from hell (rare as fuck back then), actually worked on a usenet based MUD - which is, basically, an all text MMO, in which the designer can populate dungeons and world, room by room or encounter by encounter. Hers had some basic line-art graphics available as well. Everquest actually grew out of a MUD (though it wasn't hers - I canna remember its name).

Tradewars BBS was popular too... Turned based sci-fi text MMO, centering around trading materials for massive ships and armed planets. That thing never really died - still some enthusiasts playing it and developing it. (Same guy who works on Star Citizen is still releasing updates for Tradewars.)

But Mostly... It was just chat rooms where folks would hook up. Maybe you could get some useful Warez as well.

>fast it was to be able to communicate with someone, or learn about news, or to transfer a program or file to someone
Yeeeeahhh... You could even share porn - you wanted to wait for a fucking hour for a 320x200 8-bit color picture to download. Fast is pretty much the last word I'd use describe the BBS systems and proto-internet

>Internet before the 90's..
>In violation of 25 year rule...
>...IN THE CURRENT YEAR

Byzantium, 1450 AD

Was leaning more towards the early/mid 90s for things like pictures and sound files and whatnot.

Can you remember the first time you went from BBS forum type posts to instant messaging via things like IRC? Having conversations in real time was so incredible to me at the time. I remember being in an IRC channel talking with folks on the day that Super Mario 3 launched in Japan. Some Japanese users were posting about what it was like, and answering questions everyone had in real time. Compared to the days when literally all we had for news were various magazines where content was completely controlled by those in charge. Or maybe you'd have a local newsletters or fanclub where you might be able to spread news or rumors one a week or so.

I'll never forget shit like that. Was like flipping a switch from being isolated to your local community and hoping that what you wanted to know or be a part of was available to you, to this new world where you could reach out, literally across the world in some cases, to find others to share information with about nearly anything you were interested in.

Ottomans.

Killed chan culture then claimed it as its own. Sounds familiar?

Well, internet has change our entire lifestyle, from the way we study to the way we trade and that means culture. Kids now a days born with somegadget in their hands, thats good because allows access to knowledge but also affect the way they relate to others and the environment. Internet can be a powerful tool if we control it.

>our current culture.

We had real time conversations on the BBSes (granted, lag time could be several seconds, if the server was busy, and folks were playing games). It was actually more advantageous for socializing than the later Internet or IRC, because you knew everyone was (almost certainly) local. Back then, dialing up a BBS outside of your local area code would cost you some cash (and not be worth it, as it also added lag). Thus meet ups were common, sometimes weekly, depending on the board.

Took a bit through the 90's for the internet to really evolve into more than a curiosity. As much as I hated getting all those damned AOL disks, they are probably largely responsible for popularizing the thing and getting it really going.

(That, and Al Gore... He kinda sorta really did invent the Internet... Or at least helped write and pass the laws that made it marketable.)

...and yeah, the amount of information that's available at your fingertips today is kinda mind boggling, and has been for years. But in its early days, it was clunky as hell, even as people scrambled to find more uses for it. Now, it's starting to leave the realm of just amazing, and is getting kinda scary.

Scotland, 1280