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I have a question for those who were there at the very beginning of the internet. I heard that many were skeptical about both personal computers and the interne

I have a question for those who were there at the very beginning of the internet. I heard that many were skeptical about both personal computers and the internet.. did it feel the same as it does right now with crypto-currency/quantum-computing? I wasn't there, but on my side, it feels like people were able to use internet right from the beginning, whereas there's a bigger leap to using crypto/quantum. Is it just that the infrastructure isn't in place to allow normal people to do easy things?

drblast 7y ago
Personal computing and the Internet were a much bigger deal than cryptocurrency. Each completely dominated the overall cultural dialogue for years at least in the U.S. If you ever watch "The Graduate" and the guy gives the college grad advice to go into "plastics" because it's the next big thing, that's computers in the 80's and the Internet in the 90's. People were quick to latch on to the web because it facilitated things they really wanted to do like keep in touch with friends and buy things easily. Cryptocurrency doesn't do that for most of the population. PC's were a hobbyist thing at home and more akin to cryptocurrency, but at the same time they were completely taking over how business operated. The web had a similar impact on small businesses too. Having a web presence exposed small companies to a much larger customer base than they could have ever hoped for before. Cryptocurrency doesn't really solve real-world problems like this. Most people are perfectly fine using traditional currency and wouldn't see any benefit to replacing that with Bitcoin, et al. Edit: I think the most recent change that you might have been around for was the introduction of the iPhone and the smart phones that followed. Huge paradigm shift for the general population.
pavlov 7y ago
I was there in early 1990s, and it was completely different. The immediate benefits of the Internet were obvious, and much more interesting than any theoretical "take over the world" growth story. People were willing to tackle slow connections, bad UIs and device configuration hell so that they could get chatting on IRC or posting on Usenet or downloading files from weird/shady FTP servers. With cryptocurrency, there's nothing new or interesting you can actually do, no meaningful human connections to be made. It's just speculating on a made-up growth story, like penny stocks you can trade 24/7 — but we already had penny stocks and boiler room scams.
- noxer 7y ago
  >With cryptocurrency, there's nothing new or interesting you can actually do, no meaningful human connections to be made. It's just speculating on a made-up growth story, like penny stocks you can trade 24/7 — but we already had penny stocks and boiler room scams. You really should look into that tech (Blockchain, DLT) a bit deeper. This sounds exactly like the "It's just a toy it's never gonna change the world." that people said about literally anything that changed the world. Yet that toy is here since 10+ years and it's not going away anytime soon. (Not talking about Bitcoin that could still end anyday) The speculation/trading/scams etc. are the "kids" playing with the toy. One day value will move like data and people will question why it took so long to implement this. Exchanging data for value will be normal and young people will ask how it ever could work without that. Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data. The internet really works backwards because we do not yet have the "internet of value". The whole internet runs on ads instead. As always when it comes to this topic I suggest David Schwartz's speak at We are Developers - World Congress Berlin https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI
  - westoncb 7y ago
    > Exchanging data for value will be normal and young people will ask how it ever could work without that. How is this different from using a credit card to e.g. purchase a streaming movie? Is it just more seamless? Or does the fact that there isn't a centralized bank behind the transaction somehow significant for the consumer or business? (I'm really just trying to understand this btw) > Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data. If I understand correctly, the current situation is that there are free services where you can upload/insert data, free services where you can download/consume—and there are paid services for both too. Could you elaborate on what the difference would be there? Anyone who creates/hosts content does so for free, and the people who consume it always pay?
    - seibelj 7y ago
      Legacy payments network is a dumpster fire. It works but just barely. Crypto is much cleaner and will take it over eventually, give it time.
svachalek 7y ago
In the very beginning, it was restricted to a very, very small list of users in the military and colleges. At the time it seemed like a very useful tool and pretty fun to play with. The next phase was Mosaic and then Netscape creating the web, which also felt like a pretty neat and potentially useful toy. I remember passing around sheets of paper with URLs to type in, before there were search engines. And then it all exploded, everyone had to have it, and things changed a lot as the average user was both way less technical and way less well-behaved. Given that, blockchain may be in a similar state to the early-middle Internet. It's out there, you can play with it, it's neat and seems useful even if for most people that practical purpose is elusive. Maybe someone has yet to create the Netscape that turns it into a must-have tech, but it might be happening as we speak. (Edit: TCP/IP came out in 1983, and HTTP in 1990. In 1995, the year of the Netscape IPO and when everyone "knew" the web was a big deal, there were 40 million Internet users. Now there are about 32 million Bitcoin wallets. I think some of the other answers are remembering things a bit later in time, or more colored by hindsight.) On the other hand, quantum is much farther out. The percentage of people who have used a quantum computer at all is minuscule. When it does become useful, it may be too expensive to see mass adoption for decades.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  > I remember passing around sheets of paper with URLs to type in, before there were search engines Wow, what a throwback in time! I had completely forgotten that. Thanks for the sweet memories! Also, I agree with your take. One key difference re. cryptocurrencies might be legal context however. Internet wasn't stepping on governments toes, more like disruption of the telco sector (which was already focused on emerging mobile at the time, a decade prior to smartphones). I'm not so sure the road is wide open for alternative currencies, because central banks and, oh, stability of the economy etc. It's a much tougher sell. Blockchain itself however, the tech, may have killer-apps and uses — either as an evolution of currencies, or decoupled entirely from 'currency' (trustless secured distributed databases may fit many needs IMHO, notably for social purposes like contracts or unhackable communication).
randomsearch 7y ago
If you mean “the mid 90s”, I was there for that. Need Magazine articles and TV shows at the time were hyping the internet and the web. I think they were about right. Mainstream media didn’t really catch on until the 00s. I was anticipating a complete revolution that would change everything. I remember repeatedly telling my parents how it was going to change the world. They weren’t dismissive but also didn’t think it was really going to be something for them. Eventually they relented and I got a modem - so I could surf the small number of websites available. In retrospect I was incorrect in that it has changed everything more than I imagined it would. I didn’t see mobile phones as the main access point, for example. As for the comparison with crypto and quantum, only quantum has the potential to make a comparable impact on our lives and it would likely be totally different in that quantum will be indirectly impactful, at least for the foreseeable future, whereas the internet was and is most impactful when actually used by the individual. It feels a bit silly to compare crypto (a clever but relatively simple idea for electronic currency that is currently producing a lot of CO2 and suffers from other huge problems) vs quantum computing (a revolutionary technology that has and will require major breakthroughs in theoretical physical and engineering, vast sums of investment and some of the smartest minds working for generations to enable previously unrealisable control of the physical word and paradigm-shifting computation). Real quantum is also a long way off. If you want a more near-term tech that I am as excited about now as I was about the internet in the 90s, it is without a doubt VR. It’s going to change everything.
tonyarkles 7y ago
Your question tickled something really interesting for me. Here's a brief timeline from my own life: 1991 - I am 8 years old and am learning to program BASIC on a Vic-20 1992 - My family gets an XT-class machine (640kB of RAM!) 1993 - NCSA Mosaic is released. 1994 - An Internet Cafe opens in my small town of 35,000. Using library books, I manage to find cool software to download onto 5 1/4" floppies and bring home. 1995 - I get my first C compiler (Power C) and start programming my own games (still on my XT). I start spending time at a local LAN gaming place, wishing for a better computer. 1997 - my family gets a Pentium 133, dial-up Internet, and shortly thereafter I discover Linux. I also build a 386 from parts that I scrounge up. 1999 - I get a job working at the LAN shop as a tech. The company has shifted to being a PC Hardware and repair shop. 2000 - I get 1.5mbit DSL at home, build my own Celeron 433, and dive way deeper into programming. Crypto-currency first showed up around, what, 2010 or so? In those 9 years, I don't think there's been anywhere near the kind of (pardon the pun) quantum leap we had technology- and utility-wise in the 90s.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  It allows for permissionless systems, decentralized organizations, built in incentive models, built in authorization systems, trustless smart contracts.....I'd say it's a pretty huge leap. The issue is that everyone always just talks about it being a currency and the news makes a joke about it similar to what was done with the internet early on. The other thing is that governments are greatly hindering growth. Enterprises really want to get involved but are forced to take it slow and be careful of all their actions for fear of legal reprocussions. Of course governments aren't happy and don't want to support it because it puts government currency at risk, as noted by US representatives.
- hamilyon2 7y ago
  The argument is, it is year 1981 of internet in cryptocurrency world. And rate of innovation in cryptocurrency might not be as breakneck as it was in networks. And it's mosaic is not yet written (this is all very obvious). But smart contracts are going to be big, given enough time. Smart-everything requires them to work, and we want smart-everything.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
khazhou 7y ago
When the first web browser came out, for me (and, I've heard, very many others) it was a "where were you the day of..?" moment. I literally remember the afternoon X-Mosaic came out. Computer lab, 1993, a group of grad students huddled around a SPARCStation, I walked over and tried out this new program. No, I didn't see the huge eventual potential that day (the World Wide Web would remain an ad-free space for a few more years), but it was a definitely a "today everything changed" moment.
dwd 7y ago
The skepticism in the PC was well dead by the 90s. I had access to BBC micros in the early 80s and my own C64 in '84. Two years later and I was using WordStar on a PC to type all my school assignments and learning MsDOS BASICA, Turtle Graphics and DB2. Computers were very much about creativity and doing work. I used an Apple Macintosh in 89/90 to access Usenet and it was a whole other world and the flood of information that came with the web took it to another level. Crypto/Quantum don't really have the same impact for the average person. Quantum is just different hardware to do the same thing (though make some calculations feasible to execute in hours/minutes rather than the users lifetime) Crypto will probably stay niche like other alternate payment methods like barter cards or the technology becomes part of the underlying mainstream infrastructure that no one sees along with all those billions of lines of COBOL.

drblast 7y ago

Personal computing and the Internet were a much bigger deal than cryptocurrency. Each completely dominated the overall cultural dialogue for years at least in the U.S. If you ever watch "The Graduate" and the guy gives the college grad advice to go into "plastics" because it's the next big thing, that's computers in the 80's and the Internet in the 90's. People were quick to latch on to the web because it facilitated things they really wanted to do like keep in touch with friends and buy things easily. Cryptocurrency doesn't do that for most of the population. PC's were a hobbyist thing at home and more akin to cryptocurrency, but at the same time they were completely taking over how business operated. The web had a similar impact on small businesses too. Having a web presence exposed small companies to a much larger customer base than they could have ever hoped for before. Cryptocurrency doesn't really solve real-world problems like this. Most people are perfectly fine using traditional currency and wouldn't see any benefit to replacing that with Bitcoin, et al. Edit: I think the most recent change that you might have been around for was the introduction of the iPhone and the smart phones that followed. Huge paradigm shift for the general population.

pavlov 7y ago

I was there in early 1990s, and it was completely different. The immediate benefits of the Internet were obvious, and much more interesting than any theoretical "take over the world" growth story. People were willing to tackle slow connections, bad UIs and device configuration hell so that they could get chatting on IRC or posting on Usenet or downloading files from weird/shady FTP servers. With cryptocurrency, there's nothing new or interesting you can actually do, no meaningful human connections to be made. It's just speculating on a made-up growth story, like penny stocks you can trade 24/7 — but we already had penny stocks and boiler room scams.

noxer 7y ago
>With cryptocurrency, there's nothing new or interesting you can actually do, no meaningful human connections to be made. It's just speculating on a made-up growth story, like penny stocks you can trade 24/7 — but we already had penny stocks and boiler room scams. You really should look into that tech (Blockchain, DLT) a bit deeper. This sounds exactly like the "It's just a toy it's never gonna change the world." that people said about literally anything that changed the world. Yet that toy is here since 10+ years and it's not going away anytime soon. (Not talking about Bitcoin that could still end anyday) The speculation/trading/scams etc. are the "kids" playing with the toy. One day value will move like data and people will question why it took so long to implement this. Exchanging data for value will be normal and young people will ask how it ever could work without that. Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data. The internet really works backwards because we do not yet have the "internet of value". The whole internet runs on ads instead. As always when it comes to this topic I suggest David Schwartz's speak at We are Developers - World Congress Berlin https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI https://youtu.be/Lxqz_NlX3GI
- westoncb 7y ago
  > Exchanging data for value will be normal and young people will ask how it ever could work without that. How is this different from using a credit card to e.g. purchase a streaming movie? Is it just more seamless? Or does the fact that there isn't a centralized bank behind the transaction somehow significant for the consumer or business? (I'm really just trying to understand this btw) > Kids will aks if it's true that back in the days people who inserted data into the internet had to pay for it and not the people who consumed the data. If I understand correctly, the current situation is that there are free services where you can upload/insert data, free services where you can download/consume—and there are paid services for both too. Could you elaborate on what the difference would be there? Anyone who creates/hosts content does so for free, and the people who consume it always pay?
  - seibelj 7y ago
    Legacy payments network is a dumpster fire. It works but just barely. Crypto is much cleaner and will take it over eventually, give it time.

svachalek 7y ago

In the very beginning, it was restricted to a very, very small list of users in the military and colleges. At the time it seemed like a very useful tool and pretty fun to play with. The next phase was Mosaic and then Netscape creating the web, which also felt like a pretty neat and potentially useful toy. I remember passing around sheets of paper with URLs to type in, before there were search engines. And then it all exploded, everyone had to have it, and things changed a lot as the average user was both way less technical and way less well-behaved. Given that, blockchain may be in a similar state to the early-middle Internet. It's out there, you can play with it, it's neat and seems useful even if for most people that practical purpose is elusive. Maybe someone has yet to create the Netscape that turns it into a must-have tech, but it might be happening as we speak. (Edit: TCP/IP came out in 1983, and HTTP in 1990. In 1995, the year of the Netscape IPO and when everyone "knew" the web was a big deal, there were 40 million Internet users. Now there are about 32 million Bitcoin wallets. I think some of the other answers are remembering things a bit later in time, or more colored by hindsight.) On the other hand, quantum is much farther out. The percentage of people who have used a quantum computer at all is minuscule. When it does become useful, it may be too expensive to see mass adoption for decades.

K0SM0S 7y ago
> I remember passing around sheets of paper with URLs to type in, before there were search engines Wow, what a throwback in time! I had completely forgotten that. Thanks for the sweet memories! Also, I agree with your take. One key difference re. cryptocurrencies might be legal context however. Internet wasn't stepping on governments toes, more like disruption of the telco sector (which was already focused on emerging mobile at the time, a decade prior to smartphones). I'm not so sure the road is wide open for alternative currencies, because central banks and, oh, stability of the economy etc. It's a much tougher sell. Blockchain itself however, the tech, may have killer-apps and uses — either as an evolution of currencies, or decoupled entirely from 'currency' (trustless secured distributed databases may fit many needs IMHO, notably for social purposes like contracts or unhackable communication).

randomsearch 7y ago

If you mean “the mid 90s”, I was there for that. Need Magazine articles and TV shows at the time were hyping the internet and the web. I think they were about right. Mainstream media didn’t really catch on until the 00s. I was anticipating a complete revolution that would change everything. I remember repeatedly telling my parents how it was going to change the world. They weren’t dismissive but also didn’t think it was really going to be something for them. Eventually they relented and I got a modem - so I could surf the small number of websites available. In retrospect I was incorrect in that it has changed everything more than I imagined it would. I didn’t see mobile phones as the main access point, for example. As for the comparison with crypto and quantum, only quantum has the potential to make a comparable impact on our lives and it would likely be totally different in that quantum will be indirectly impactful, at least for the foreseeable future, whereas the internet was and is most impactful when actually used by the individual. It feels a bit silly to compare crypto (a clever but relatively simple idea for electronic currency that is currently producing a lot of CO2 and suffers from other huge problems) vs quantum computing (a revolutionary technology that has and will require major breakthroughs in theoretical physical and engineering, vast sums of investment and some of the smartest minds working for generations to enable previously unrealisable control of the physical word and paradigm-shifting computation). Real quantum is also a long way off. If you want a more near-term tech that I am as excited about now as I was about the internet in the 90s, it is without a doubt VR. It’s going to change everything.

tonyarkles 7y ago

Your question tickled something really interesting for me. Here's a brief timeline from my own life: 1991 - I am 8 years old and am learning to program BASIC on a Vic-20 1992 - My family gets an XT-class machine (640kB of RAM!) 1993 - NCSA Mosaic is released. 1994 - An Internet Cafe opens in my small town of 35,000. Using library books, I manage to find cool software to download onto 5 1/4" floppies and bring home. 1995 - I get my first C compiler (Power C) and start programming my own games (still on my XT). I start spending time at a local LAN gaming place, wishing for a better computer. 1997 - my family gets a Pentium 133, dial-up Internet, and shortly thereafter I discover Linux. I also build a 386 from parts that I scrounge up. 1999 - I get a job working at the LAN shop as a tech. The company has shifted to being a PC Hardware and repair shop. 2000 - I get 1.5mbit DSL at home, build my own Celeron 433, and dive way deeper into programming. Crypto-currency first showed up around, what, 2010 or so? In those 9 years, I don't think there's been anywhere near the kind of (pardon the pun) quantum leap we had technology- and utility-wise in the 90s.

hanniabu 7y ago
It allows for permissionless systems, decentralized organizations, built in incentive models, built in authorization systems, trustless smart contracts.....I'd say it's a pretty huge leap. The issue is that everyone always just talks about it being a currency and the news makes a joke about it similar to what was done with the internet early on. The other thing is that governments are greatly hindering growth. Enterprises really want to get involved but are forced to take it slow and be careful of all their actions for fear of legal reprocussions. Of course governments aren't happy and don't want to support it because it puts government currency at risk, as noted by US representatives.
hamilyon2 7y ago
The argument is, it is year 1981 of internet in cryptocurrency world. And rate of innovation in cryptocurrency might not be as breakneck as it was in networks. And it's mosaic is not yet written (this is all very obvious). But smart contracts are going to be big, given enough time. Smart-everything requires them to work, and we want smart-everything.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

khazhou 7y ago

When the first web browser came out, for me (and, I've heard, very many others) it was a "where were you the day of..?" moment. I literally remember the afternoon X-Mosaic came out. Computer lab, 1993, a group of grad students huddled around a SPARCStation, I walked over and tried out this new program. No, I didn't see the huge eventual potential that day (the World Wide Web would remain an ad-free space for a few more years), but it was a definitely a "today everything changed" moment.

dwd 7y ago

The skepticism in the PC was well dead by the 90s. I had access to BBC micros in the early 80s and my own C64 in '84. Two years later and I was using WordStar on a PC to type all my school assignments and learning MsDOS BASICA, Turtle Graphics and DB2. Computers were very much about creativity and doing work. I used an Apple Macintosh in 89/90 to access Usenet and it was a whole other world and the flood of information that came with the web took it to another level. Crypto/Quantum don't really have the same impact for the average person. Quantum is just different hardware to do the same thing (though make some calculations feasible to execute in hours/minutes rather than the users lifetime) Crypto will probably stay niche like other alternate payment methods like barter cards or the technology becomes part of the underlying mainstream infrastructure that no one sees along with all those billions of lines of COBOL.