Prior to the internet condensing into just 5 or so websites, what do you remember fondling about being online?
I remember winning a raffle contest on the old Terraria forums and getting to pick my own title (instead of just New Member, Member, Well-Known Member). Of course, since I was like 13, I picked a random collection of letters that only I knew was an acronym of my signature on said forums.
Back in 1995, my first night using the internet. I remember visiting websites by guessing their URL, since there were no search engines and I didn’t know of Yahoo! yet.
I visited the Louvre (louvre.fr was an easy guess), and was amazed by all the photos of art that I could see! I also visited NASA (nasa.gov) and saw some satellite images, something that blew my mind.
It was a new world opening to me. I stayed awake til late, mesmerized by all the internet could offer. In those first years of using the internet I remember some nights that I would log off early because “there was nothing else to see”.
Back in 1995 we had an “Internet Phonebook.” Literally a 4 inch thick book which listed domain names and brief descriptions. This was before / just as the search engines we know today were taking off. Google was founded in 1998. Alta Vista and Yahoo! had only just been founded in '95.
I’ve seen those before!
I’m from Brazil, so we didn’t have anything back then… commercial providers only started in 1996, so even if you wanted to use the internet you couldn’t. Only universities had very limited access, and later some companies with ties to the government.