“It’s the browser your mom will use.”
-TIME Magazine talking about Internet Explorer, September 16, 1996
“Email is boring but good. Like pencils, it just works,”
-Tom Jennings, speaking to WIRED in April 1996
“Thanks for accentuating the positive, but I’m afraid more people are interested in cybersex than bird-watching.”
–Ann Lander in June 1996, responding to a letter arguing for the benefits of online communication, using examples like imagining group collaborations for graduate research, or bird-watching meetings
“It sounds like asking for trouble to me. Aside from the fact that you are carrying on with a married woman, Kate may not be what you expect. I recently heard about a teen who was communicating online with a female he thought was about his age; when they met, he found out she was a 76-year-old granny!”
Dear Abby, responding in July 1996 to a reader about the dangers of online dating and who you’re actually speaking to, A.K.A. cat fishing
“Dr. [Kimberly S.] Young said that if alcoholism is any guide to Netaholism, between 2 percent and 5 percent of the estimated 20 million Americans who go on line might be addicted,”
-Pam Belluck, in an article about the symptoms of internet addiction in The New York Times, December 1, 1996
“Universities are considered hot zones for potential Internet junkies because they often give students free and unlimited Net access.”
-From the Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1996
“Aimless chat is the insidious seduction of the Internet; it can replace inward contemplation and real experience.”
-Sidney Perkowitz writing for the May/June 1996 issue of The American Prospect
“I can imagine a not-so distant future when a sizable fraction of professional writers won’t ever enter the world of print but will go directly from school to digital publishing…
Maybe they’ll be constrained at first by the needs of older readers who were raised on print and who have only recently and partially and timidly converted to the nonlinear faith. But in time, this will change, as printing comes to be seen as too expensive and cumbersome, as computers become more powerful and more interlinked, and as they show up in every classroom and office, in every living room and den.”
-Paul Roberts, speaking to Harper’s in July 1996
“The Internet has become the ultimate narrowcasting vehicle: everyone from UFO buffs to New York Yankee fans has a Website (or dozen) to call his own—a dot-com in every pot. Technology will only quicken the pace at which news is moving away from the universal and toward the individualized,”
-Richard Zoglin, in the October 21, 1996 issue of TIME
“The Internet as we know it now will be quaint… The Citizen’s Band radio phase died out, and the Internet is kind of in that CB radio state. It will evolve and mature in a couple of ways. It’ll be a global electronic city, with slum areas and red light districts, but it’ll also have a central business district.”
-Timothy Logue, speaking with Satellite Communications, September 1996
“How many times have you received a message on paper and wished you could send quick reply back to the sender? Motorola’s new PageWriter two-way pager lets you do exactly that—no need to connect to a telephone or computer as previous two-way pagers have required. To send a message, all you do is unfold a miniature keyboard and type in your text. […] Just how big demand for the device will be remains to be seen.”
-Frank Vizard, writing in Popular Science’s December 1996 issue
“CD-ROMs have become so popular that virtually all new desktop computers are shipped with the ability to use them. But by the turn of the century, CD-ROMs could themselves become unused relics, just like those old 5¼-inch floppies… And why? The big ol’ Internet, as you might expect.”
William Casey, writing in the July 22, 1996 issue of the Washington Post
“As the Internet’s capacity for data transmission increases and multimedia technology improves, it will become as easy to copy music, photos and movies as it is to copy text now… How can government hope to prevent copyright infringement without encroaching upon individual privacy rights? It cannot. Content providers must accept the loss of those customers willing to pirate content and concentrate on packaging their products with enough value added so that wealthier customers remain willing to pay.”
-Steven D. Lavine, predicting the rise of online piracy in The New York Times in March 1996
“Ten years from now, America Online will have gone the way of the water-bed store.”
-Bruce R. Burningham, writing a letter to the editor of The New York Times in the January 14, 1996 issue
“The Internet is a revolution in communications that will change the world significantly. The Internet opens a whole new way to communicate with your friends and find and share information of all types. Microsoft is betting that the Internet will continue to grow in popularity until it is as mainstream as the telephone is today.”
-Bill Gates, speaking to TIME, September 16, 1996
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- Paul Krugman, Leftist genius and Nobel Prize-winning "economist," 1998.
Solely to annoy children like you.
A dial up connection meant downloading a low definition 2 minute video was an exercise in endurance.
The Internet was however much the same as now except there was more competition in search engines, browsers and video sites. Mostly though, it was just slower. Much slower.