What did the Internet look like in 1996? "...very few web designers had even the most rudimentary of aesthetic sensibilities, and nearly half of them were clinically retarded."
posted by desjardins on Jan 26, 2008 - 89 comments

Textfiles.com: Before the Web, before Google, we scoured Fidonet, absorbing the forbidden fruits of anarchy, occult and a lot of bad fiction. For better or worse, TEXTFILES are relics of that age.
posted by magnificentsven on Jan 23, 2003 - 12 comments

Yes, Virginia, there was life before the Internet...
...but nobody's bothered to archive it yet. Thanks to those wacky .edu's, there's a fair amount of historical data out there, but if you're hoping the newspapers who charge for archive "reprints" will have material from the '40s, the '60s or even the '80s, you're still better off going to the library and flipping through microfiche (bet that's the first time THAT word's been used on MetaFilter). I hesitated blogging this story here until I saw how the Internet History Timeline caught some people by surprise... Yes, even we MetaFilterers are sitting on the shoulders of Giants (and a few of us are old enough to remember "They Might Be Giants" as a movie starring George C. Scott).
posted by wendell on Jul 24, 2000 - 8 comments

The Internet FAQ Consortium is a goldmine of information. The highlight of the site is the Internet RFC/FYI/STD/BCP Archives.
posted by tdecius on Sep 22, 1999 - 0 comments