The Internet: 1995

by Verithrax

Back to The Funnies.

Verithrax2007-01-03 18:18:34
A very humorous set of predictions and notes about the Internet in 1994, written for the Internet magazine in 1995: http://www.neonshop.com/bio/iw/bwv6n1.htm

Some of them are bizarrely off the mark, like this gem:
QUOTE

In five-and-a-half years, when people still aren't buying set-top boxes, vendors will realize that it wasn't because of high prices, rather that people don't want to gamble, date, or watch videos "on demand."
Daganev2007-01-03 19:35:10
ummm... who uses the web through a set top box?
Unknown2007-01-03 20:10:17
QUOTE(daganev @ Jan 3 2007, 11:35 AM) 369045

ummm... who uses the web through a set top box?


Lots of people with either WebTV or people who use OnDemand, oor people who have a gaming system that supports it.
Unknown2007-01-03 20:15:15
I remember the Internet in 1995.

"Oh great. That damn ripple effect applet again. I'm gonna be here another 2 hours."


Daganev2007-01-03 20:15:22
QUOTE(Fallen @ Jan 3 2007, 12:10 PM) 369055

Lots of people with either WebTV or people who use OnDemand, oor people who have a gaming system that supports it.



I must be missing something. I thought OnDemand was just pre set TV shows?
Verithrax2007-01-03 20:28:41
The idea was that sometime in 95 AT&T, Sony, et al would release set-top boxes for general Internet access. That obviously didn't pan out back then, but the poster was predicting that those would drop in cost before disappearing from the market due to lack of demand. He also predicted they might survive if they were able to do things that people really want to do, like browse local libraries and archives and distance learning.
Daganev2007-01-03 20:37:24
Ahh... I thought you ment that people didn't want to gamble and date from thier TV in the family room.
Callia2007-01-04 05:23:10
Oh my god... I remember those things...

Hehe, that was a fun time, back when the internet was still cool... now we have MySpace...

Anarias2007-01-04 10:03:21
That page is full of myopic elitist bastards.
ferlas2007-01-04 10:45:43
QUOTE(daganev @ Jan 3 2007, 08:37 PM) 369065

Ahh... I thought you ment that people didn't want to gamble and date from thier TV in the family room.


Im confused, I thought people did want to gamble and date from their tv.
Verithrax2007-01-04 11:21:04
RTFA!
Caffrey2007-01-04 11:24:34
Ahhhh, browsing in Mosaic, with text only web pages that still took ages to load on the 28.8k modem, those were the days. Add a picture to your homepage? Yaaargh... *waits ages while it loads*. 0day warez split into many 1.44MB files compressed in as many way possible to make the download smaller, and yet still took ages. Ooh and discovering IRC, I could talk to people all over the world!! Geocities and Hotmail were king (well 1996+ not 1995 I guess), before yahoo and microsoft bought them up (Internet Archive didn't cache my Babylon 5 web site sad.gif)

Then again I'll stick to DSL/leased line, full multimedia web sites, animations and streaming video anyday. biggrin.gif