The Internet in 1994

My 7- and 9-year-old boys are more versed in how to use the Internet than my parents ever will be and I fear that at some point, they will surpass me too. I guess that’s just how it is, right? I pride myself in staying as informed and up-to-date as possible with all new technology, sites, apps and all that other tech stuff (hold on a sec… let me just check with my boys and see if there’s anything I’m missing).

The Internet wasn’t always as ubiquitous as it is now.

I watched this video of Angelina Jolie talking about the Internet in 1994, which got me thinking about my Internet journey.

“You can get on this Internet and talk to people all over the place… It’s amazing.”

It seemed a little early in the Internet history for “talking to people all over the place”, but Angelina Jolie obviously had more access to things and money than I did at the time. In 1994, I was in high school, had a computer and knew the Internet existed, but didn’t have it at home or school. I went to the library to get all my information from books and encyclopedias were still sold in supermarkets. A couple of years later, I remember sitting around the dorm with my friends logging on to AOL via our awesome dial-up connections. I watched my friends chat in chat rooms, but never did it myself. One girl even had a few ‘boyfriends’ she would chat with, which we thought was so scandalous. There was always talk of her meeting one of them, but as far as I know she never did.

I was reading through Lisa’s Nostalgia Cafe (I found it via a Google search) and she doesn’t really source her information there very well, but one fact that I found really interesting was the growth of websites throughout the 90s.

To compare that info, I looked up the number of websites as of writing this piece and “The Indexed Web contains at least 14.33 billion pages.”

There’s also this 1994 promotional video which show a glimpse of the future.

Another great video talks about “Hot New Technology: The Internet”

I really loved this video from the Today Show in 1994 where they talk about the Internet and the @ symbol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI

The year 1994 was really just the beginning of most people’s Internet journey, at least those of us that were alive then. What are your first memories of the Internet?

Image via Buzzfeed