"Alison, can you explain what internet is?"
January 29, 2011 2:49 PM Subscribe
Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, in the distant era of 1994, try to puzzle out what "internet" is. They should have asked Peter Mansbridge and Bill Cameron at the CBC, who had reported a year earlier about this revolution in which fifteen million people were taking part.
Boy, the sight of Telix takes me back.
Boy, the sight of Telix takes me back.
The sad fact of the matter is that NBC Universal is still trying to figure out what the internet is.
posted by mhoye at 2:54 PM on January 29, 2011 [28 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 2:54 PM on January 29, 2011 [28 favorites]
Needs to be remixed asap.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:55 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:55 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Sadly, Gopher support was dropped from Firefox partway through 2010.
posted by mhoye at 2:56 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by mhoye at 2:56 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Why is Gumbel so pissed off at Internet?
posted by nathancaswell at 3:01 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by nathancaswell at 3:01 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
God, I miss Bill Cameron. That was a pretty good explanation for 1993. I like how "the" had not been added to "internet" yet.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 3:03 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 3:03 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Anyone remember Kermit?
posted by Blazecock Pileon
Yeah, and always keeping a null modem cable handy somewhere in the back of a drawer.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:03 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Blazecock Pileon
Yeah, and always keeping a null modem cable handy somewhere in the back of a drawer.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:03 PM on January 29, 2011
Gumbel was always pissed off at something.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 3:04 PM on January 29, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 3:04 PM on January 29, 2011 [4 favorites]
I think we should start dropping "the" again. It sounds awesome and scary.
Internet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
posted by nathancaswell at 3:10 PM on January 29, 2011 [14 favorites]
Internet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
posted by nathancaswell at 3:10 PM on January 29, 2011 [14 favorites]
Anyone remember Kermit?
I preferred zmodem, myself.
posted by killdevil at 3:13 PM on January 29, 2011 [8 favorites]
I preferred zmodem, myself.
posted by killdevil at 3:13 PM on January 29, 2011 [8 favorites]
Screw explaining the Internet; can someone explain to me what the deal is with Katie's hair in that clip?
posted by killdevil at 3:15 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by killdevil at 3:15 PM on January 29, 2011
Awesome prescience from The Next Whole Earth Catalog in 1980:
Computer networks are new telecommunications media for transmitting words and pictures. They're used to send messages, pass on news and gossip, search vast indexed data files, manage multinational businesses, bring together faraway compatriots, and take part in interactive fantasy games. They're being promoted hard by an army of international dreamers and at least 20 major corporations. They seem likely to change our lives more than any technology since the automobile.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2011 [28 favorites]
Computer networks are new telecommunications media for transmitting words and pictures. They're used to send messages, pass on news and gossip, search vast indexed data files, manage multinational businesses, bring together faraway compatriots, and take part in interactive fantasy games. They're being promoted hard by an army of international dreamers and at least 20 major corporations. They seem likely to change our lives more than any technology since the automobile.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2011 [28 favorites]
Anyone remember Kermit?
Of course... but once ZMODEM came around Kermit was left in the dust.
Sadly, Gopher support was dropped from Firefox partway through 2010.
:( Thankfully it looks like Lynx is still fully Gopher compatible. Aw yeah.
posted by kmz at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2011
Of course... but once ZMODEM came around Kermit was left in the dust.
Sadly, Gopher support was dropped from Firefox partway through 2010.
:( Thankfully it looks like Lynx is still fully Gopher compatible. Aw yeah.
posted by kmz at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2011
Forget the internet, can anyone tell me what Katie's hairstyle is all about? New wave soccer mom?
posted by Liquidwolf at 3:25 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Liquidwolf at 3:25 PM on January 29, 2011
Why is Gumbel so pissed off at Internet?
Because he hates nerds.
posted by empath at 3:32 PM on January 29, 2011
Because he hates nerds.
posted by empath at 3:32 PM on January 29, 2011
Screw explaining the Internet; can someone explain to me what the deal is with Katie's hair in that clip?
Forget the internet, can anyone tell me what Katie's hairstyle is all about? New wave soccer mom?
Lollerskates. But really, the nineties don't seem remote at all until you look carefully at hair and clothing styles.
posted by killdevil at 3:36 PM on January 29, 2011
Forget the internet, can anyone tell me what Katie's hairstyle is all about? New wave soccer mom?
Lollerskates. But really, the nineties don't seem remote at all until you look carefully at hair and clothing styles.
posted by killdevil at 3:36 PM on January 29, 2011
back before 19994,I remember when Mathowie asked me for a new computer and said the internet is here and what till you see my new web-page!
posted by tustinrick at 3:47 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by tustinrick at 3:47 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
That reminded me of this clip (audio NSFW, "F" word) from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This was hilarious and perfectly timed in 2001.
Spoiler alert, according to Ben Affleck's character: "The Internet is communications tool, used the world over, where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."
posted by TurkishGolds at 3:48 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Spoiler alert, according to Ben Affleck's character: "The Internet is communications tool, used the world over, where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."
posted by TurkishGolds at 3:48 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Katie Couric seems to be channelling Conan O' brian's hair in some weird internet/tv time warp.
posted by Sailormom at 3:50 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Sailormom at 3:50 PM on January 29, 2011
I still find it a bit strange that in 1993 people didn't know what the internet was.
I mean, I guess I can look back at those days a bit... people would look at me a bit strange when I would tell them about using email.. Or when I tried to explain my virtual life on irc... And when I told people that I met my partner via a mailing list, the words would have no meaning... But by that time, I'd been online in various ways for, what? 7 or 8 years?
It's probably the only time in my entire life that I've truly been ahead of the curve.
posted by hippybear at 4:01 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
I mean, I guess I can look back at those days a bit... people would look at me a bit strange when I would tell them about using email.. Or when I tried to explain my virtual life on irc... And when I told people that I met my partner via a mailing list, the words would have no meaning... But by that time, I'd been online in various ways for, what? 7 or 8 years?
It's probably the only time in my entire life that I've truly been ahead of the curve.
posted by hippybear at 4:01 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
I note how Gumbel manages to change the subject as soon as he is given the out by talking about the earthquake (which I presume is the Northridge quake, from the date of the video).
Stupid Internet.
posted by briank at 4:08 PM on January 29, 2011
Stupid Internet.
posted by briank at 4:08 PM on January 29, 2011
Was there a BMODEM? Maybe it was specific to commodore BBSs , I can't find any references to it at all on the net.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:19 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Ad hominem at 4:19 PM on January 29, 2011
The Internet is communications tool, used the world over, where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."
Plus ça change...
posted by killdevil at 4:30 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Plus ça change...
posted by killdevil at 4:30 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
I remember telling someone in about 1986 that this BBC email business was totally worthless, but if you could figure out how to make email work ACROSS the BBCs and just go straight to your Commodore 64, man, that would be pretty cool.
posted by norm at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by norm at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011
I wouldn't have bothered watching the Today show in 1994, as I was probably too busy using my Prodigy account to discuss the films of Quentin Tarantino with anonymous creepy strangers who probably still lived with their mums.
posted by Dr. Zira at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Dr. Zira at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011
True story: Back in 1994, I worked for a small company whose owner's brother was a reporter for the local PBS station, WXXI. They had heard about "this Internet thing" and were looking for someone who could explain it to them. Conveniently, I was a graduate computer science student at RIT and the graduate labs had Internet access (recently upgraded to include DNS!). So they asked me to show them the Internet.
First thing was getting permission to bring a film crew into the graduate lab. I asked my department chair if it was okay to do so. His answer was what the heck, it's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. So the minor annoyance of my fellow grad students, I spent a couple of hours talking with a reporter while they filmed us accessing the net.
At the time the WWW was still new and most sites were text and a few graphics. But the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) actually had sound files you could play so that was one of the sites I showed them. Luckily, the Sun SPARCstations we had could play sound files (remember the .au format?). It was the most exciting thing I could think of. We also talked about a few of the other services available at the time, including email, FTP and USENET.
Ahh, USENET. The camera zoomed into the list of newsgroups I had up and landed on the alt.sex.* hierarchy. Of course. It became part of the graphic design for the segment.
Another area of discussion was the impending change from control of the Internet by the National Science Foundation to the public. I don't recall exactly what I said, but I guarantee it was wrong, or at least shortsighted. Ha!
Oh, and they filmed me back at my company as background. I didn't know what else to do so I spent most of the time checking a circuit with an oscilloscope. It looked high tech, at least.
posted by tommasz at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011 [9 favorites]
First thing was getting permission to bring a film crew into the graduate lab. I asked my department chair if it was okay to do so. His answer was what the heck, it's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. So the minor annoyance of my fellow grad students, I spent a couple of hours talking with a reporter while they filmed us accessing the net.
At the time the WWW was still new and most sites were text and a few graphics. But the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) actually had sound files you could play so that was one of the sites I showed them. Luckily, the Sun SPARCstations we had could play sound files (remember the .au format?). It was the most exciting thing I could think of. We also talked about a few of the other services available at the time, including email, FTP and USENET.
Ahh, USENET. The camera zoomed into the list of newsgroups I had up and landed on the alt.sex.* hierarchy. Of course. It became part of the graphic design for the segment.
Another area of discussion was the impending change from control of the Internet by the National Science Foundation to the public. I don't recall exactly what I said, but I guarantee it was wrong, or at least shortsighted. Ha!
Oh, and they filmed me back at my company as background. I didn't know what else to do so I spent most of the time checking a circuit with an oscilloscope. It looked high tech, at least.
posted by tommasz at 4:33 PM on January 29, 2011 [9 favorites]
I can't believe that in between the time I looked at this, got back to it, and commented someone else had already made a Commodore reference.
+++
posted by norm at 4:34 PM on January 29, 2011
+++
posted by norm at 4:34 PM on January 29, 2011
All he seems most sure about is that people are afraid to go to sleep. The wheel in the sky keeps on turning!!
posted by Senator at 4:39 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Senator at 4:39 PM on January 29, 2011
Metafilter: What, do you write to it, like mail?
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:40 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:40 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Wow nostalgia, before I got on the internet,around the same time as dial up BBSs I used to connect to Message boards and chat systems via commercial x25 networks like Telenet and Tymnet. These services has dial up numbers all over the world, from the prompt you could connect to systems all over the world. These systems mainly ran PRIMEOS and VMS. As I said these were commercial networks so you you typically needed a billing code to connect to a machine, but there were thousands that accepted "collect" connections. There were chat systems with dozens or hundreds of users on at once, there were BBSs set up on hacked vaxen by 10 year old kids.
If you ever used Compuserve you used an x25 network.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:42 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
If you ever used Compuserve you used an x25 network.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:42 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
Metafilter: a channel to Internet.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:43 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 4:43 PM on January 29, 2011
Check this And thisout if you have any interest in x25. The two big hacker hangouts were ALTOS and QSD, Both run in west Germany I think
posted by Ad hominem at 4:52 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Ad hominem at 4:52 PM on January 29, 2011
Anyone remember Kermit?
It was all downhill after Pigs in Space.
posted by arcticseal at 4:52 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
It was all downhill after Pigs in Space.
posted by arcticseal at 4:52 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Oy vey! The '94 Earthquake! ha ha! There are still logs of that IRC channel.. with my name splattered all over it... woooooo google search, irc logs.
Pardon me while I look at all my dorky "I'M ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF THE INTERNET, I'M ON IRC WITH SCRIPTS!" inanity..
Gosh, Mr. Gumbell was practically violent about the at sign.
posted by cavalier at 4:57 PM on January 29, 2011
Pardon me while I look at all my dorky "I'M ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF THE INTERNET, I'M ON IRC WITH SCRIPTS!" inanity..
Gosh, Mr. Gumbell was practically violent about the at sign.
posted by cavalier at 4:57 PM on January 29, 2011
The sad fact of the matter is that NBC Universal is still trying to figure out what the internet is.
Hah. QFT.
I remember when every 3rd newspaper article started with a dummies-guide-level description of what the internet is. Drive me insane.
posted by Leon at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
Hah. QFT.
I remember when every 3rd newspaper article started with a dummies-guide-level description of what the internet is. Drive me insane.
posted by Leon at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
You need to bear in mind that the NBC Newsroom at that time were using the BASYS system which worked kind of like a very simple version of "Internet" - it connected to all the newsrooms worldwide, you could top o' line instant message anyone on the system and get live news feeds from Reuters / AP and search Lexis Nexis. There was much grumbling when the system got upgraded in the late 90's.
posted by ebear at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by ebear at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Speaking of gopher and old protocols... Anybody wanna help me get my Gopherspace social network idea up and running (IOW, do all the actual work ;P) I think it would bring the memories and joy back, get rid of all this stupid Facebook, commerical, mass popularity social network, and make everything nice and new again. Fuck diaspora. Let's make it really hard to grok, so only we who dare to venture can do so!
posted by symbioid at 4:59 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 4:59 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Oh and speaking of the @ sign... notice it wasn't the @ sign, but literally a small a with a circle around it?
posted by symbioid at 5:00 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by symbioid at 5:00 PM on January 29, 2011 [5 favorites]
Fuck diaspora. Let's make it really hard to grok, so only we who dare to venture can do so!
Finger Protocol
posted by Ad hominem at 5:02 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Finger Protocol
posted by Ad hominem at 5:02 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
(I can't find any scripts that integrate finger and twitter. Internets, you have disappointed me)
posted by Leon at 5:21 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Leon at 5:21 PM on January 29, 2011
Anyone remember Kermit?
Anyone still running finger? Hands up? Anyone?What's thin, green and smells like pork?
I'm sorry and promise never to do that again.
posted by mistersquid at 5:33 PM on January 29, 2011 [15 favorites]
Was there a BMODEM? Maybe it was specific to commodore BBSs , I can't find any references to it at all on the net.
xmodem, zmodem, ymodem, ymodem-g, ymodem-1k, c-modem.
I don't recall a BMODEM.
There was a Compuserve B, back when people still paid for that sort of thing.
posted by madajb at 5:46 PM on January 29, 2011
xmodem, zmodem, ymodem, ymodem-g, ymodem-1k, c-modem.
I don't recall a BMODEM.
There was a Compuserve B, back when people still paid for that sort of thing.
posted by madajb at 5:46 PM on January 29, 2011
I was surprised to discover that John Carmack did his last .plan update in 2005. He held out longer than most.
posted by ymgve at 5:50 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by ymgve at 5:50 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
I miss listservs, usenet, IRC, MUDs, and most of all Archie. The web ruined it all. Go back to AOL you bastards.
posted by humanfont at 6:00 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by humanfont at 6:00 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
Looks like there's still a finger server running at mit.edu. Think it gives the same data as their people directory, but I'm impressed it's still running.
posted by Leon at 6:04 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Leon at 6:04 PM on January 29, 2011
EGYPT knows how to pull the plug on the Internet!
posted by tustinrick at 6:17 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by tustinrick at 6:17 PM on January 29, 2011
Two trivial observations:
1) Bryant Gumbel still irritates the beejezus out of me.
2) They all looked and sounded so . . . bored.
posted by treepour at 6:32 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
1) Bryant Gumbel still irritates the beejezus out of me.
2) They all looked and sounded so . . . bored.
posted by treepour at 6:32 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Ok, so it's fine to be kind of unsure what internet is, if you're in 1994, though to be in media and not know is kind of weird. What is really strange to me is not knowing what @ means or referring to it as the "internet address" or saying "violence at nbc ge com" and not saying "dot" in there. How long have we said "dot"?
posted by Night_owl at 6:34 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Night_owl at 6:34 PM on January 29, 2011
How long have we said "dot"?
It wasn't always the standard usage.
posted by penduluum at 6:52 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
It wasn't always the standard usage.
posted by penduluum at 6:52 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Bah. In 1994, I was promised that the future was going to be multimedia CD-ROMs, not the Internet.
posted by rh at 7:03 PM on January 29, 2011 [7 favorites]
posted by rh at 7:03 PM on January 29, 2011 [7 favorites]
I'm pretty sure that Timothy Leary explained the internet to me in 1984. At least I think that was the internet he was talking about.
posted by zinfandel at 8:24 PM on January 29, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by zinfandel at 8:24 PM on January 29, 2011 [4 favorites]
Looks liketory, but I'm impressed it's still running.
There's two domains you can finger, actually, one with the usual unix finger info and one with people directory info (class year, department, etc). Very useful, since most of our computer labs run an Ubuntu-based distro.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 8:30 PM on January 29, 2011
There's two domains you can finger, actually, one with the usual unix finger info and one with people directory info (class year, department, etc). Very useful, since most of our computer labs run an Ubuntu-based distro.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 8:30 PM on January 29, 2011
Anyone still running finger?
$ finger @any.io
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 8:34 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
$ finger @any.io
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 8:34 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Check this And thisout if you have any interest in x25. The two big hacker hangouts were ALTOS and QSD, Both run in west Germany I think.
You could actually reach them from the Internet if you knew how. Two ways I knew of were the UK's JANET & Motorolla's ftpbox.mot.com, both of which had telnettable X.25 PADs.
posted by scalefree at 8:59 PM on January 29, 2011
You could actually reach them from the Internet if you knew how. Two ways I knew of were the UK's JANET & Motorolla's ftpbox.mot.com, both of which had telnettable X.25 PADs.
posted by scalefree at 8:59 PM on January 29, 2011
I love Katie Couric making a fist and slamming it into her open palm when the off-screen producer is explaining the Internet in a roundabout way. You know she just wants to scream, "get to the fucking point!"
posted by BobbyVan at 9:09 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by BobbyVan at 9:09 PM on January 29, 2011
This pretty much captures the feeling of 1993 for my geek friends and myself:
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:38 PM on January 29, 2011
For years they've been saying these things would change the world; would mature from adding machines and typewriters to tools of the human spirit. Now, maybe it's coming true; because of Internet.'Missing definite article' aside, what an opening line. Bill Cameron was a great newswriter.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:38 PM on January 29, 2011
I love the CBC bit explaining emoticons.
I got my first e-mail address my freshman year of college (1993-1994). Not long after that I started getting forwards from my friends with the standard "if you don't send this on to 10 people right now, puppies will die" stuff. Then Dad and others in the older generation started in on that about a decade later. Now people post that kind of stuff in the status messages on facebook and try and guilt you by saying "only 1% of people will repost this and therefore most people don't care about veterans/homeless/puppies/whatever". Sorry folks, after almost 20 years I'm numb to that sort of thing. Thank you, internet.
posted by weathergal at 9:40 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
I got my first e-mail address my freshman year of college (1993-1994). Not long after that I started getting forwards from my friends with the standard "if you don't send this on to 10 people right now, puppies will die" stuff. Then Dad and others in the older generation started in on that about a decade later. Now people post that kind of stuff in the status messages on facebook and try and guilt you by saying "only 1% of people will repost this and therefore most people don't care about veterans/homeless/puppies/whatever". Sorry folks, after almost 20 years I'm numb to that sort of thing. Thank you, internet.
posted by weathergal at 9:40 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
The CBC website is glitchy.
Peter Mansbridge has always been a big bald dork. Many years ago, when he first debuted as an anchor on the CBC, he interviewed a little old lady, who as a young child had survived the sinking of the Titanic. He asked her what happened to her father? She replied: "He drowned."
posted by ovvl at 9:48 PM on January 29, 2011
Peter Mansbridge has always been a big bald dork. Many years ago, when he first debuted as an anchor on the CBC, he interviewed a little old lady, who as a young child had survived the sinking of the Titanic. He asked her what happened to her father? She replied: "He drowned."
posted by ovvl at 9:48 PM on January 29, 2011
No discussion of '90s-era tech nostalgia is complete without a link to AT&T's "You Will" ad campaign. I'm actually really impressed at how accurate the predictions turned out to be.
(And I have fond memories of using Gopher to access the NNTP server at Florida State. See, my school had a censored newsfeed...)
posted by asterix at 9:49 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
(And I have fond memories of using Gopher to access the NNTP server at Florida State. See, my school had a censored newsfeed...)
posted by asterix at 9:49 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
There was a Compuserve B, back when people still paid for that sort of thing.
I am probably getting C-modem and Compuserv B mixed up together. I'm considering buying this book.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:55 PM on January 29, 2011
I am probably getting C-modem and Compuserv B mixed up together. I'm considering buying this book.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:55 PM on January 29, 2011
Not long after that I started getting forwards from my friends with the standard "if you don't send this on to 10 people right now, puppies will die" stuff.
One of my greatest moments in my proto-internet life was writing one of these, adding some fake forward headers, and sending it from my AOL account. I was such a proud father (at the age of 11) when it came back to me, having made the rounds.
posted by SNWidget at 10:02 PM on January 29, 2011
One of my greatest moments in my proto-internet life was writing one of these, adding some fake forward headers, and sending it from my AOL account. I was such a proud father (at the age of 11) when it came back to me, having made the rounds.
posted by SNWidget at 10:02 PM on January 29, 2011
$ finger @any.io
Pretty cool, but this is a special kind of twisted genius.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:07 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
Pretty cool, but this is a special kind of twisted genius.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:07 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
I remember sitting in the computer lab at IU, sending BITNET messages back and forth with my friends. And the VAXPHONE!
posted by SisterHavana at 10:51 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by SisterHavana at 10:51 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Had this very same conversation with my grandfather last week.
posted by jeremy b at 11:21 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by jeremy b at 11:21 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Awesome prescience from The Next Whole Earth Catalog in 1980:
Some of us were alive back then, you know. It wasn't exactly an unusual take on things. Heck, Brand got The WELL going just five years later.
I went online in late '81, and we all knew it was going to be big even before we got bang-pathed onto the internet.
I'm much more meh about the anchors' confusion than others, I guess, because I remember having pretty much that exact same conversation with numerous people, over and over again. They'd ask you all sorts of far-out questions, too, in the early days, assuming you had to type everything in hexadecimal or that if you dialed in someone could remotely take control of your kitchen appliances.
posted by dhartung at 11:28 PM on January 29, 2011
Some of us were alive back then, you know. It wasn't exactly an unusual take on things. Heck, Brand got The WELL going just five years later.
I went online in late '81, and we all knew it was going to be big even before we got bang-pathed onto the internet.
I'm much more meh about the anchors' confusion than others, I guess, because I remember having pretty much that exact same conversation with numerous people, over and over again. They'd ask you all sorts of far-out questions, too, in the early days, assuming you had to type everything in hexadecimal or that if you dialed in someone could remotely take control of your kitchen appliances.
posted by dhartung at 11:28 PM on January 29, 2011
Internet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
So you're saying an Internet Kill Switch is a good idea?
How long have we said "dot"?
When I started University in 1990 we were using it - my first ever email address was "robertc at ai dot ed dot ac dot uk" - so at least that long.
posted by robertc at 2:54 AM on January 30, 2011
So you're saying an Internet Kill Switch is a good idea?
How long have we said "dot"?
When I started University in 1990 we were using it - my first ever email address was "robertc at ai dot ed dot ac dot uk" - so at least that long.
posted by robertc at 2:54 AM on January 30, 2011
assuming you had to type everything in hexadecimal
It was octal, and Fuck You CIS, that's why Delphi ruled ( until Murdoch got involved and fucked everything up... )
posted by mikelieman at 3:12 AM on January 30, 2011
It was octal, and Fuck You CIS, that's why Delphi ruled ( until Murdoch got involved and fucked everything up... )
posted by mikelieman at 3:12 AM on January 30, 2011
We use finger to control our public pcs at the university where I work. We can shut them down, get usage stats, tell them to download a new disk image from the network and a bunch of other cool stuff through it if it's done from the right network. finger command@ machinename. Custom daemon obviously. Off the shelf products have caught up with us a bit now but Im loathe to switch cos I still think the first daemon I wrote is pretty cool.
posted by vbfg at 5:04 AM on January 30, 2011
posted by vbfg at 5:04 AM on January 30, 2011
weathergal: "I love the CBC bit explaining emoticons. "
Wait, I couldn't tell if you were kidding or serious. Could you use an emoticon? :-(
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 5:52 AM on January 30, 2011
Wait, I couldn't tell if you were kidding or serious. Could you use an emoticon? :-(
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 5:52 AM on January 30, 2011
StickyCarpet: "Yeah, and always keeping a null modem cable handy somewhere in the back of a drawer"
Just this week I had to set up Solaris and ZFS on a little NAS without any video output. So, digging in the bottom drawer, underneath the dusty tangle of *enormous* external SCSI-50s and parallel port cables I find, yes, an ancient null modem cable (with DE-9 and DB-25 and some weird 19-pin thing that make it massive). Then I have to rebuild a 2002-era PC which is basically the last thing in the house with a usable serial port. And after all that, it worked fine. I recall the last time I used that cable was 1990 or so, and that was to share out dialup SLIP to another PC. So anyway, yeah, null modem cables: keep them someplace warm and dry and they will last *forever*.
posted by meehawl at 11:27 AM on January 30, 2011
Just this week I had to set up Solaris and ZFS on a little NAS without any video output. So, digging in the bottom drawer, underneath the dusty tangle of *enormous* external SCSI-50s and parallel port cables I find, yes, an ancient null modem cable (with DE-9 and DB-25 and some weird 19-pin thing that make it massive). Then I have to rebuild a 2002-era PC which is basically the last thing in the house with a usable serial port. And after all that, it worked fine. I recall the last time I used that cable was 1990 or so, and that was to share out dialup SLIP to another PC. So anyway, yeah, null modem cables: keep them someplace warm and dry and they will last *forever*.
posted by meehawl at 11:27 AM on January 30, 2011
In the distant era of 1994 no one knew what a "VCR" was either. They had to use video cameras to record their TV sets.
posted by dgaicun at 11:04 PM on January 30, 2011
posted by dgaicun at 11:04 PM on January 30, 2011
Yup, one of the best examples of the contrast in quality between Canadian TV and US (Mansbridgean dorkiness notwithstanding.) It cracked me up to hear the guy being interviewed saying how polite people were on the forums back then - had Godwin's Law not been coined yet? I remember some rather intense flamewars even back when Usenet had less than 3000 forums...
Ah, 1994. I was just a music nerd on the periphery of a crowd of net geeks. I'd recently got on the net with my Atari ST (yup, awesome MIDI computer with very tight timing, brains of my studio up 'til then) and a 9600 baud modem. Soon replaced with a Mac - digital audio.) Unix terminal emulation, ZMODEM, emacs, pine, lynx, etc. A friend said in late '93, "Have you checked out Mosaic yet?"
The Northridge quake was the first event I heard about first via the net.
Found a better place to live when a couple who worked at Wired posted a call on ba.housing on Usenet that winter to form a household, and five of us wired up a Victorian flat in the heart of SF with Cat-5 and an ISDN connection from sirius.com. (Later went with SDSL from PacBell to keep the server farm on the back porch going, when Sirius was ruined by acquisition and their tech support became some idiot in Texas reading from a script. I still miss the reliability of SDSL upload speeds vs. today's cable modems.) A later housemate had been a sysadmin at the WELL, and babysat render farms at Pixar and Pacific Data Images (something I'd end up doing on a more modest scale later in the decade when we turned the idle office network at the ad agency for which I did tech support into a Cinema 4D render farm at night.) A year later we were running a large information site from our living room, collaborating with scientists and journalists around the world, and out of the need to manage it came another housemate's launch of a HTML-extension web tools startup, with me as the first non-programmer alpha-tester of its code. It was a rapid education from '93 up to about '97.
Lots of very loose talk in those days about the ways the net would change everything (fueled not just by Wired but by even woolier Mondo 2000 types - I wish I had tapes of some of the conversations at a Mondo party in '92 at their Maybeck mansion in the Berkeley hills; they would be truly cringe-worthy now.)
posted by Philofacts at 8:01 AM on January 31, 2011
Ah, 1994. I was just a music nerd on the periphery of a crowd of net geeks. I'd recently got on the net with my Atari ST (yup, awesome MIDI computer with very tight timing, brains of my studio up 'til then) and a 9600 baud modem. Soon replaced with a Mac - digital audio.) Unix terminal emulation, ZMODEM, emacs, pine, lynx, etc. A friend said in late '93, "Have you checked out Mosaic yet?"
The Northridge quake was the first event I heard about first via the net.
Found a better place to live when a couple who worked at Wired posted a call on ba.housing on Usenet that winter to form a household, and five of us wired up a Victorian flat in the heart of SF with Cat-5 and an ISDN connection from sirius.com. (Later went with SDSL from PacBell to keep the server farm on the back porch going, when Sirius was ruined by acquisition and their tech support became some idiot in Texas reading from a script. I still miss the reliability of SDSL upload speeds vs. today's cable modems.) A later housemate had been a sysadmin at the WELL, and babysat render farms at Pixar and Pacific Data Images (something I'd end up doing on a more modest scale later in the decade when we turned the idle office network at the ad agency for which I did tech support into a Cinema 4D render farm at night.) A year later we were running a large information site from our living room, collaborating with scientists and journalists around the world, and out of the need to manage it came another housemate's launch of a HTML-extension web tools startup, with me as the first non-programmer alpha-tester of its code. It was a rapid education from '93 up to about '97.
Lots of very loose talk in those days about the ways the net would change everything (fueled not just by Wired but by even woolier Mondo 2000 types - I wish I had tapes of some of the conversations at a Mondo party in '92 at their Maybeck mansion in the Berkeley hills; they would be truly cringe-worthy now.)
posted by Philofacts at 8:01 AM on January 31, 2011
Anyone still running finger? Hands up? Anyone?
I've used it a few times within the last decade...
posted by Philofacts at 8:03 AM on January 31, 2011
I've used it a few times within the last decade...
posted by Philofacts at 8:03 AM on January 31, 2011
For media people, Gumbel and Couric were pretty clueless. Maybe it was an age thing? In '93, in my first term of my freshman year at college, I was first introduced to the internet by various net geek friends, and I was a teenager who used to be obsessed with WarGames. My reaction to finding out about the net? I can't remember, but I think I probably just said "cool!" I got my first email address soon after-- and it's all been downhill ever since.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 8:19 AM on February 1, 2011
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 8:19 AM on February 1, 2011
How long have we said "dot"?
Around the time DNS was implemented in 1983 (see RFC 882 & 883). Prior to that addresses were typically expressed as a "bang path" of hosts connected via UUCP: sourcehost!connecthost!desthost!user. It was an explicit store-&-forward system, where you'd name not just the host but the path between you & that host. Each server along the path had scheduled connections to its list of "close" servers & would exchange traffic with each in turn, usually over dialup modems. Bang paths persisted until the early 90s before dying off with the emergence of a stable, open NSF backbone (thanks to Al Gore!). Imagine sending a letter with the name of each post office for it to pass through written on the envelope.
posted by scalefree at 12:42 PM on February 1, 2011
Around the time DNS was implemented in 1983 (see RFC 882 & 883). Prior to that addresses were typically expressed as a "bang path" of hosts connected via UUCP: sourcehost!connecthost!desthost!user. It was an explicit store-&-forward system, where you'd name not just the host but the path between you & that host. Each server along the path had scheduled connections to its list of "close" servers & would exchange traffic with each in turn, usually over dialup modems. Bang paths persisted until the early 90s before dying off with the emergence of a stable, open NSF backbone (thanks to Al Gore!). Imagine sending a letter with the name of each post office for it to pass through written on the envelope.
posted by scalefree at 12:42 PM on February 1, 2011
In 1994, I definitely already had a wired subscription (from issue 2 on) and was on GEnie. I don't actually remember when I actually got dial-up internet. (or broadband for that matter). I can't remember what life was like was before that, tbh.
posted by empath at 2:25 PM on February 1, 2011
posted by empath at 2:25 PM on February 1, 2011
scalefree
That's all really interesting! Not quite what I was asking, though. I mean, like in an email address, when speaking it out loud, we say "name (at) domain (dot) com". But in the video, he just says "name (at) domain com". I was just wondering when that particular speaking convention happened.
posted by Night_owl at 10:35 PM on February 1, 2011
That's all really interesting! Not quite what I was asking, though. I mean, like in an email address, when speaking it out loud, we say "name (at) domain (dot) com". But in the video, he just says "name (at) domain com". I was just wondering when that particular speaking convention happened.
posted by Night_owl at 10:35 PM on February 1, 2011
I think he was leaving it out from ignorance, not common practice. My experience doesn't go quite that far back but I'm betting it pretty much coincided with the advent of DNS, 1983.
Computer geeks have a long history of odd & prominent pronunciation of punctuation in a computer context - at, dot, bang, shebang, twiddle. Dot in particular saw spoken use going back to the early days of Unix with .dotfiles, & there would've been several years' precedent with IP numbers before DNS was added to the mix as well.
So I don't have absolute proof but I gotta stick with my belief that it would've happened almost immediately among the ARPANET userbase as the new protocols & conventions for using them came into practice.
posted by scalefree at 12:00 AM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]
Computer geeks have a long history of odd & prominent pronunciation of punctuation in a computer context - at, dot, bang, shebang, twiddle. Dot in particular saw spoken use going back to the early days of Unix with .dotfiles, & there would've been several years' precedent with IP numbers before DNS was added to the mix as well.
So I don't have absolute proof but I gotta stick with my belief that it would've happened almost immediately among the ARPANET userbase as the new protocols & conventions for using them came into practice.
posted by scalefree at 12:00 AM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]
Although I was able to view it in time, the original Today Show video has been removed.
posted by asciident at 4:29 PM on February 3, 2011
posted by asciident at 4:29 PM on February 3, 2011
The Guy Who Posted The Hilarious Today Show ‘What Is The Internet’ Reportedly Fired By NBC.
posted by scalefree at 2:39 PM on February 6, 2011
posted by scalefree at 2:39 PM on February 6, 2011
NBC: Here’s Why We Fired the “Today Show” YouTube Leaker.
posted by scalefree at 2:42 PM on February 6, 2011
posted by scalefree at 2:42 PM on February 6, 2011
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