How well known was the Internet prior to 1995? (general, 1990s, biggest)

[belmont22]

Was it basically common knowledge by 1989 or so that the Internet existed, or did people who weren't "Geeks" or in academia basically have no idea what it was until the public started to suddenly use it en masse circa 1995-96?

From what I understand in the early 90s the Internet was very much available to people who wanted it, but the Web which only debuted in 1990/91, was still so small. The Internet infrastructure was also too complicated for the average person to understand until the Mosaic browser came out in 1993.

If you asked the average person in 1993 what the Internet or Web was, would they be likely to say yes?

[NJGOAT]

I was only 13 in 1993, but I was pretty computer literate and was already starting to build my own computers with the help of my older brother. I knew the "internet" existed, but I didn't really know what it was. Like most people at that time, my "online activity" was confined to dial-up BBS's which were self contained sites, though many had extensive features from games to chat forums to file hosting. AOL was really the gateway most people took to the internet then. At first AOL was a self-contained site, but then around 1993/4 with AOL 2.0/2.5 they added USENET and broader access to the "internet". This let people leave AOL's "walled garden", but in all honesty beyond the USENET groups there wasn't much out there. For most people in the early and mid 1990's, AOL was the internet.

[PJSaturn]

Originally Posted by belmont22

Was it basically common knowledge by 1989 or so that the Internet existed, or did people who weren't "Geeks" or in academia basically have no idea what it was until the public started to suddenly use it en masse circa 1995-96?

From what I understand in the early 90s the Internet was very much available to people who wanted it, but the Web which only debuted in 1990/91, was still so small. The Internet infrastructure was also too complicated for the average person to understand until the Mosaic browser came out in 1993.

If you asked the average person in 1993 what the Internet or Web was, would they be likely to say yes?

I was aware of the Internet during its infancy, only because a friend of my dad, who always had the newest and best of everything, had a computer and showed us the Internet when we visited. We couldn't believe our eyes! It was so amazing. I don't recall what year it was that "Uncle Bob" got his first Internet connection, but I'll never forget the first time I saw it.

I believe I started using the Internet for research at my job around 1995. Didn't get my own PC and Internet at home until March 1998.

.

[belmont22]

Originally Posted by PJSinger

I was aware of the Internet during its infancy, only because a friend of my dad, who always had the newest and best of everything, had a computer and showed us the Internet when we visited. We couldn't believe our eyes! It was so amazing. I don't recall what year it was that "Uncle Bob" got his first Internet connection, but I'll never forget the first time I saw it.

Was he using the actual Internet or was it just a local BBS?

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

I was only 13 in 1993, but I was pretty computer literate and was already starting to build my own computers with the help of my older brother. I knew the "internet" existed, but I didn't really know what it was. Like most people at that time, my "online activity" was confined to dial-up BBS's which were self contained sites, though many had extensive features from games to chat forums to file hosting. AOL was really the gateway most people took to the internet then. At first AOL was a self-contained site, but then around 1993/4 with AOL 2.0/2.5 they added USENET and broader access to the "internet". This let people leave AOL's "walled garden", but in all honesty beyond the USENET groups there wasn't much out there. For most people in the early and mid 1990's, AOL was the internet.

Very true, I remember being all over AOL in 1993 as a 13-year-old as well. I remember buying a book at Fry's Electronics later that year, when I learned how to access FTP sites to retrieve guitar tablature. I thought that was amazing at the time--and the same book had a section at the end describing how the new idea of the World Wide Web and Mosaic(which everyone has forgot about) was going to be the future of the internet. I had a few friends though that even a couple years prior to that around 91/92 were using dial-up BBS's(Mostly to, uh...access pornography)... This was on the outskirts of Silicon Valley so we had pretty tech-savvy kids around however.

I remember later in the decade when I was in high school around 1996 or so, when the WWW suddenly became more accessible with the early browsers like Netscape and entered the popular stream of consciousness--and my mom would brag about how I was on the internet before anyone else in our family... But by that time, I knew kids who were hackers or building websites--while I was sort of just using it for entertainment...

[WyoNewk]

To my knowledge, the "internet" didn't really exist in 1989, at least not at all as we know it today.

I had a modem in the early 80s that I used with my brand new Apple II, but if I wanted to connect with anything I had to use a phone number for that particular site and make a long distance call. Nope. Didn't use it much. CompuServe was the biggest site that I knew of.

I started using it again in 1991 for business to send digital files to a printer (Pagemaker, Photoshop, and various image files). It was basically the same thing except my modem was much faster and there were more sites to access. I still had to have the phone number for the site, then make a long distance call.

Some had toll-free numbers and allotted X-minutes per month with your subscription to their site, but there was still no WWW. I met my late wife on GEnie that year. General Electric Network for Information Exchange was one of the largest, probably behind CompuServe. It was strictly text. No graphics of any kind. It was, as the name implied, for the exchange of information, but that information was no more reliable than what's on today's internet. I used it for contacts, then used their email-type service, more like the personal messages that members of C-D can send each other.

AOL was huge when it came out. I resisted it for a few years as a loyal member of GEnie, but finally crossed over. Unfortunately, they were outgrowing their capacity. It could take a half-hour to log on with all the traffic. After several months I finally gave up and was given a small refund, I believe court mandated.

By that time, the mid-90s, the WWW was up and running strong. Netscape provided beautiful color and graphics, and you could find a host of sites for entertainment and information. Since then, I'd say it's mostly been small refinements -- faster transmission rates and more complex pages to take advantage of the speedy downloads. Google is huge, but it's little more than a refinement of Web Crawler.

That's how I viewed it. I was probably somewhat of a "geek" but only by professional necessity as a publisher. I didn't and still don't see those earliest years in the '90s as internet years. I can't recall the exact year that I got internet access, but I think it was 1995. A few geeky friends of mine put the first ISP together in my town. I was asked to join them for $5K or $10K but didn't have the extra change in my pocket at the time. (It now covers several Rocky Mountain states.) I was among the first to sign up for their service, however. Again, I think that was January '95 or '96. But I met my new wife online in '97. It was very popular by then. If you weren't "online" you weren't with it.

In 1993, I'd say most people knew of AOL and many used it. It's what got most homes online at that time, and from there it was a short hop, Netscape Navigator and an ISP away from the internet.

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by belmont22

Was it basically common knowledge by 1989 or so that the Internet existed, or did people who weren't "Geeks" or in academia basically have no idea what it was until the public started to suddenly use it en masse circa 1995-96?

From what I understand in the early 90s the Internet was very much available to people who wanted it, but the Web which only debuted in 1990/91, was still so small. The Internet infrastructure was also too complicated for the average person to understand until the Mosaic browser came out in 1993.

If you asked the average person in 1993 what the Internet or Web was, would they be likely to say yes?

In 1975 began working in the administration of a large academic computer center located in NYC, so as each development came along it was availabe to me even though I was not a tech person.

By the late 80's I was participating in various newsgroups and listservs. Groups had a lot of activity, but of course measured against today's numbers it was a world of the elite. I still have a large stack of postings from netnews groups that I printed out from back then...the level of discussions in these groups was in a whole other league compared to what passes for discussion on the internet now. I particpated in internet groups more then than I do now.

However, people were not running around with laptops and even desktop computers were not in widespread use. Almost no one I knew had access to the internet, and even in the early 90's I don't recall that adults outside of my work environment or similar places had much of an idea what was going on. Students were more savvy because they were involved at their campuses.

[Listener2307]

I couldn't figure out what good it was. At the time I was Director of Marketing for a telecommunications related firm. The boss wanted to set us up with a website, so I made a bunch of calls to telephone company people and every one of them said, "Why you gonna do that?"
By the end 1995, we still could not figure out a way to increase sales through the Internet. Later, we figured it out. But in '95 it was a waste of money and effort.

I went on line myself in '97, I think. Netscape.

[almost3am]

I got my first real job in 1991 and no one had internet access there. Less than 2 years later I went to work for a telecom company and had access to the Internet then, I have a few amusing memories mainly around being amazed at the most basic things.

-There was a site called Who's Who, I think, and I thought to myself, "Wow, a national wide white pages, how awesome."
-I went to an interview and a guy mentioned he created his company's website, which I had looked at at least 5 times in preparation. During the interview he boasted that he had 8 views in the previous week, which was probably all me.
-I created a goofy website with basic US trivia, it was really dumb thinking back, but I had over 100 people visit my site and take my dumb quiz. I was basically teaching myself to use HTML for fun.
-I used Monster.com in about 1996 and got a job from it
-Around that time I was writing a research paper and used company websites and access to library files
-I got my Yahoo e-mail address in about 1997

[wawa1992]

I was born in 1992. But I've researched this before, and you can't stop me from posting... so I'm going to give my two cents.

Most people knew about the internet sometime prior to 1995. My mom's dad had Prodigy, a form of early internet, starting around 1990 or so. The "information superhighway" talk was all over the news in 1993-1994. So I'd say most people had a limited knowledge about the internet pre-1995. Some may have simply said "isn't that what researchers at Harvard use?" or something like that, but I'd say the average person learned about the internet in the early 1990s.