The internet once belonged to cats.
It was that weird period in the late nineties when everyone who was online seemed to be posting cat pictures (believe it or not, My Cat Hates You(Opens in a new tab), the blog that pioneered posting photos of grumpy cats, is still online). It just seemed like the thing to do: Start a blog; post a photo of your cute feline companion; be happy when someone leaves a comment.
There were other things online besides cats, of course. But it was a time when the Internet, then spelled with a capital "I", was a big thing but not an essential thing yet, and no one was completely sure how it’ll turn out.
I was there at the very beginning. Sometime in 1994, my dad connected his Windows 3.1 PC to the internet via a U.S. Robotics dial-up modem, and said, "Son, this here is called the Internet."
You could move files around (very slowly) via FTP, you could search for documents via Gopher, and the best browser was called Cello. I used it to find some weird poetry, early William Gibson works, and lyrics to Tool songs. I knew that the world wide web was going to be huge one day, but back then it was still very empty. The internet of that era wasn’t really for anybody yet; it was a vast frontier to be filled with many things, and then explored.
After that initial era of exploration, the inte ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
