[WEB4LIB] Friday afternoon nostalgia

[Darryl Friesen]

If you haven't looked at this stuff yet, especially the second link about
the history of the Internet, you should.  Astoundingly interesting!
Especially reading about all the people who played an important role but
were, for some mysterious reason, left out of a certain recently published
book about how the web was created single-handedly by just one man. (not to
point fingers)

I was lucky enough to get a summer job with Computing Services at the
University of Saskatchewan around this time.  I remember using all those
'cutting edge' tools like Archie.  I remember NSF Net lifting the commercial
restrictions of the net in 91 (and being that I worked at an Educational
institution thinking it was a bad idea -- still a valid thought perhaps).  I
remember Andreessen jumping ship from NCSA with all the Mosaic code (ya, I
know he _said_ he re-wrote it all at Mosaic Communications Corporation).

My friends (and AOL users), who think they "know all about the Internet"
because they got a dialup account last year, wonder why I look at them with
a certain amount of distain.  It's because, like many of you 'old timers', I
was there from the start; I remember it all (well, most of it).

Those two sites really are the 'goods'.  Be sure to check them out
(especially the 1989/1990 page at w3history.org, which features a picture of
frequent web4lib contributor Peter Scott!).

Well, that's my Friday nostalgia.  Better quite before I get misty.


- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc.                        Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
  Programmer/Analyst                            http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Consulting & Development, Computing Services
  University of Saskatchewan                   "The Truth Is Out There"
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