Posts tagged “internet history”

In the late 1970s, Quasar Industries fooled the public with a fake household robot that was actually just a guy in the crowd with a wire up his sleeve. More interesting: the resulting debate on ARPANET became the internet's first free speech controversy.

The web saved my life as a suicidal, closeted gay teenager in Trinidad, connecting me to people and information I desperately needed. It then taught me everything I know. That's why I've spent nearly 20 years building websites, and why I'm driven to make it easier for others to build them too.

A quick tour through decades of US government surveillance programs, from COINTELPRO's mail-opening in the 50s through Carnivore, ECHELON, Room 641A, DCSNet, and now PRISM. The names change, the methods evolve, but the core activity stays the same. PRISM shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention.

We're in Bubble 2.0. The signs are obvious: insane acquisition prices, startups with no business models getting VC, and Facebook thinking it's the new Google. One rule-breaking startup per year makes real money. Everyone else burns cash. I lived through the last crash, but this time I'm on the inside. Here we go again.

Being a web developer in 2005 fills me with smug satisfaction, wonder, and pure joy. The web is becoming mundane and everyday -- and that's a triumph. The exciting times are just beginning, and I have a proposal about how the next phase will unfold. Big dreams, but so was the Internet.

Google Groups now archives Usenet posts going back to before I was born, meaning every major event of my entire life is documented in searchable form. It's a fantastically cool digital record of history, even if the discussions themselves are full of clueless people.