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September 20th, 2004
 | 02:48 pm - Lazy newspapers ...
(Edit: Boy am I embarrassed now. Yes, 35 years ago is 1969, and (sob!) that is a plausible date for the beginnings of the Internet (ARPANET was commissioned that year). You'd think, having been born in 1970 and having a birthday next week, I'd be able to work out when 35 years ago was, wouldn't you ?)
(but my point about mixing up "Internet" and "World Wide Web" still stands (just))
Seen on scotsman.com today :
Happy birthday
The Lazy Guide to Net Culture celebrates 35 years of the wonderful World Wide Web
Alas, I'd have to register to read the article, but really, the title is bad enough.
For a start, they're certainly not celebrating 35 years of the WWW (which was first thought of in about 1991, (I should look that up, but it was around then) ), and secondly, whatever they are celebrating the birthday of, it's not 35 years old !
The Internet ? Much earlier than 1979 - from here , looks like something recognisable as a precursor to the Internet was around in 1972-3.
Usenet ? Well, that started in 1979, but it's got a much lower profile than the WWW these days, I doubt they're celebrating that. (And today is Mon Sep 4038 15:09:37 BST 1993. Whee.)
Current Mood:  amused
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Well it's all pretty arguable. you can argue the phone is the precusor of the Internet for heaven's sake. I have seen slies I have used which set 1981 as the first date a computer was joined to a network which could be called the germ of the Internet (the military one - Arpanet? DARPA?)I fist saw Mosaic in 1993 - it was certainly available earlier, but not much earlier. Ahh, Mosaic. Those were the days :)
(actually, I seem to remember ignoring the WWW for a while - I thought it was just another vaguely interesting experimental thing, and waited to see if anything came of it :-) )
Anyway, whatever the date, The Scotsman article title annoys me by conflating "World Wide Web" and "Internet" - the Internet still encompasses a much wider collection of hosts and protocols, HTTP is just one of many (the dominant one, perhaps).
(Gah, suddenly having a flashback to the days when traffic to overseas Muds from the Uni network made a noticeable percentage (3-4%, as I recall) of the Uni's network traffic. Text-based Muds. These days it'd be more like 0.01% (if anyone still bothers playing them from Uni) )
![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/28933456/1577296) | | From: |  musosian |
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| Date: | September 20th, 2004 03:01 pm (UTC) |
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I still play text-based muds from uni! (well, one (discworld.atuin.net), and I play more from home, but sometimes from uni too).
I reckon hotmail would probably eat most of uni's traffic. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/2767711/732878) | | From: | numbat |
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| Date: | September 21st, 2004 02:38 pm (UTC) |
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As a friend of mine pointed out years ago, the 'Internet' is the highway, while the 'WWW' is actually one of the vehicles that travel upon that highway. A useful description for those who insist upon conflating the two. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/11038321/2061106) | | From: | fasangel |
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| Date: | September 20th, 2004 08:51 am (UTC) |
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Um, 35 years ago was 1969, not 1979. |
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