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I served in the military 1990-1994 and worked with a missile targeting system. It was global, included digital images of military bases, units, cities, and targets of tactical/strategic importance. It operated much like the internet in that it utilized Sat-Comms, email, and text.
When I started college in the fall of 94, I was informed that we could use the computer lab and internet to send email to friends and loved ones? Most of us were like, whats that? I think it was called eudora? Most of the computers were very limited. Internet was brand new for most of the public in 94. Anyway, it was text only, no pics or websites. It took an extremely long period of time to send/receive pictures. Websites had to be designed using HTML or earlier code? Lots of computer programmers and computer science geeks getting their degrees in that field. Today, I think they are called IT degrees?
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 think "the Internet" used to be confused with online services and BBSes. Your average person in their car on the street probably would have no idea what "the Web" was in 1993, as "the Web" only consisted of around 300 hosts in those days, although they might have a faint idea of what the Internet was, or at least it was common knowledge that computers could communicate with each other over long distances. The Internet, and the web, really broke out in popular culture in late 1994 and 1995 as early adopters started connecting and going beyond the "walled gardens" of AOL and CompuServe. Numerous movies from that era referenced the internet (Hackers - Angelina Jolie's debut, The Net with Susan Sarandon, etc.), a pizzeria made national news when patrons could order pizza over this new thing called "The Web", etc., media buzz about internet pornography, and soon web addresses became common in advertising. I have an August 26, 1996 Time at my fingertips and most of the advertisers by then included a URL.
Also, it was difficult for the normal PC user to set up access the internet themselves prior to the release of Windows 95. It meant becoming familiar with things like PPP and IP stacks, modem configurations (anybody remember the "Hayes" format?), etc. With Windows 95, internet configuration became a lot simpler, and soon after, ISPs began to charge by the month rather than by the month AND the hour, and drop ridiculous fees for connecting with a "fast" 14.4k or 28.8k modem.
50% of American adults were connected to the internet in 2000, earlier than almost any other country (the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands might be exceptions).
Yes, you're right, that online services were *not* the true internet, well not in the early 90s anyways. Wasn't Prodigy etc during that time essentially a glorified national BBS?
Also bbses used terminal software. You could use any terminal software you wanted to connect to the bbs and windows had window’s terminal as the default software but as it was limited people tended to download/get something better. BBS usually didn’t charge per hour but did have limitations on the number of people who could be connected or how long you could stay connected and bbs usually only had local numbers(so you could run up a long distance call).
Things like AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy used their own software and they charged per hour, however they had lots of local number so you were not as likely to need to call long distance. You could stay online as long as you wanted but you would run up quite a bill.
My first experience with the internet was usenet groups . Aol, bbs, and prodigy had email but the email was limited to the company only (you could email an aol user but not a bbs user or prodigy user initially). Later they would allow e-mails between services and around the whole internet. AOL offered instant messaging and chat rooms which were very popular.
Basically the internet pre 1995(or so) is for geeks only. Is not easy to use and lacks some of the functionality that we associate with it.
Basically, WWW is the html language that operates on the internet. Interesting that Senator Al Gore did push the legislation for the study of html. I personally use a site W3Schools Online Web Tutorials to help me.
50% of American adults were connected to the internet in 2000, earlier than almost any other country (the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands might be exceptions).
Australia also adopted it really fast. I think they even got a commercial ISP before the States did, way back in 1989! Two years before the WWW was even released in 1991.
From what I can find, the number of non-institutional, home-based internet connections was around 16 million worldwide toward the end of 1995, with slightly more than half of those in the US and Canada. So, it was a niche product, but wider and wider adoption followed quickly after that year, and even by late 1996, both the Clinton and Dole campaigns had built up their web operations (compared to a bare, obscure handful during the 1994 midterm elections). In fact, they are archived online:
As mentioned by others, the "information superhighway" terminology picked up in 1993. That's when the media began talking about 500 television channels, computer-based medicine, and all sorts of other related concepts. This didn't really create much public awareness of the WWW in particular, since that was a bit too specific to place within most people's understanding of computers.
However, 1994 was probably the beginning of the WWW's widespread dissemination into the public mind - in November 1994, the Rolling Stones did a live concert "cybercast" which got a lot of media attention at the time.
By then, there was a growing awareness (at least among younger people) that there was a large system of connected computers that could serve up information and entertainment, and that the system could be used from home.
50% of American adults were connected to the internet in 2000, earlier than almost any other country (the Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands might be exceptions).
Actually the internet as we know it (or the web) was invented in Europe in 1989. The US wasn't even connected to it until 1992. I don't think the US was necessarily any faster to adapt, then Europe. Maybe even a bit slower.
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