The Internet In 1995

This video gives us a look back at what the Internet was like back nearly 20 years ago. It’s 27 minutes long, but pretty amusing to watch in retrospect:

H/T: Ezra Klein

FILED UNDER: Science & Technology,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Brian Guy says:

    “Eudora”. Wow. There’s a word I haven’t even =thought= of since, maybe, 1998. (I do still use Usenet. Me, and four others.)

  2. john personna says:

    I was rockin’ a Power Macintosh 6100 in 1995, with Eudora but had to use SLIP or PPP. Cable did not come to my house so soon.

    Related

  3. @Brian Guy:

    *frowns* But I still use Eudora…

  4. sam says:

    Crikey. I’d forgotten about Eudora. And Usenet. Ah, the flamewars. A personal fav was comp.sys.mac.advocacy. Delicious. Kinda like one of the early Church councils.

  5. Dave Schuler says:

    An exaggeration. In 1995 I was surfing the web using Netscape Navigator under Windows 3.1x. Web pages didn’t have all the animation they do now and search engines were much more limited than Google (that’s why Google exists).

    On the bright side there wasn’t nearly as much clutter and advertising as there is now.

  6. Davebo says:

    I have one client that still uses Eudora despite my whining about it.

    When they have email problems I tell them to call Eudora for support but don’t expect an answer.

    But then I remember using the internet, as it was at the time, in 1986 on a military installation. Gopher came around in 92 or so as I recall. But back then the porn choices were really limited!

  7. matt says:

    Oh but the “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” gifs were so awesome!!1

    I was surfing the web then in dos using a browser that was written by some guys in like the czech republic and a 14.4 modem that I had upgraded to from a 2400 baud model…

  8. Tony W says:

    @Dave Schuler: Yes, the web was tragically under-monetized in those days…. Interestingly, web pages took exactly the same time to load then (over AOL behind a 2400 baud modem) as they do today.

  9. @Dave Schuler:

    In 1995 I was surfing the web using Netscape Navigator under Windows 3.1x

    Just barely: Netscape Navigator 1.0 was released in December 1994. I started college in August of 1995 and that was the first time I had internet access. The software the university gave out for students at the time didn’t include a web browser: the WWW was considered just a fad and the “real internet” was mostly on Gopher still.

  10. Franklin says:

    Went to college in ’91. During orientation, I was forced to choose a username right then and there; for what, I had absolutely no idea. Within a couple years I had made a few steps into the Internet, using Metacrawler for search because it just seemed like it was the best way to get around the limitations of the individual search engines. A classmate of mine named Larry Page had another idea entirely.

  11. Dave Schuler says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    Early adopter. I downloaded it for free.

    I go back to the archie and veronica days.

  12. matt says:

    Mosiac on the high powered systems back then yo!

  13. sam says:

    “Early adopter. I downloaded it for free.”

    Netscape added a link to your bookmark file with just a click, IIRC. I’m still using the file (updated of course through all these years) as my home page in Opera. Of course, I have to make the entries manually now, but I’m still using it.