Can anyone who came around to the internet during the 1990's tell me what you find that's different about today's internet culture, and how it affects your view about the web?
2007-03-05 18:43:23 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Other - Arts & Humanities
I did not access the www until 1998. Back then the internet was very non-commercial, artistic, and cliquish. Usenet was where you wanted to go to have a discussion online, the trolls there were actually hilariously intelligent and witty in their attacks.
Personal homepages were all the rage, and ICQ was the popular instant messenger. Many people went online to escape real life, to play. They weren't looking to shop, find a spouse, plan their futures, look for a job or research their personal problems.
The numbers of people in some online communities were small enough to where you were able to establish friendships that lasted years. In order to download an MP3 you had to trade on a upload/download ratio system. Yahoo was just a directory.
Today, I see millions of strangers, my friends have all but vanished, websites cater to the masses, it is all commercial now.
2007-03-05 19:27:42 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
I think today's internet is more open to all types of users. During the nineties (especially mid) most internet users were either researchers or students or techies. There were far, far fewer commercial and entertainment sites and search engines were much less sophisticated.
The internet was also predominantly English- today that has changed as you see millions of sites in Chinese, French, Arabic, Spanish, etc. It has truly become an international forum.
Internet sales have also gone up during the last decade (especially in the new millenium). I think people are much more inclined to purchase things online than they were 15 years ago. This is due to the fact that online sales sites have become more secure AND more user-friendly.
So many more differences- I don't even know where to begin!!
2007-03-06 03:09:31 · answer #2 · answered by kia78 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There was much less advertising and spam. Everyone wasn't trying to make a buck and you could actually down load programs without getting Trojans. At 14400 BPS or less pictures took a long time to down load. My computer felt more secure and anonymous. What was available was free information. On line gaming was still in infancy with games like wolfinstein.
When it was very small it was competing with BBS's (Bulletin Board Services) that you remotely dialed up.
I was reluctant to go high speed because I didn't want to view advertisements faster. Recently purchased a Nintendo Wii and am amazed at how often we use it's wifi ability to view you tube video's on the TV even though we have digital cable. At times we have four systems accessing the www at the same time including the Nintendo and play station. Rather than an information resource it is turning into more of an entertainment and retail source (commercialization).
2007-03-06 03:19:29 · answer #3 · answered by justpatagn 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Internet came in 1995. There were only html pages on the sites.
Few sites were there asking NIC to register. and internet was not that much popular.
2007-03-06 02:49:10 · answer #4 · answered by Talha 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i remember using the internet in the mid to late 90's for FTP file sharing across the world and text-based role play gaming (like dungeons and dragons)
2007-03-06 02:52:15 · answer #5 · answered by Doug 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋