Monday, May 07, 2007

The history of the Internet

Years ago, I started work on a book that would be, more or less, a collection of columns that I had written under the "Caught in the 'Net" banner. It was intended to be a sort-of history of the Internet, during its more popularized phase (meaning, when it broke out of the universities in the mid-90s) and was going to be titled something kind of catchy like, "The Internet: An Autobiography."

Nothing ever came of the few days of work I put into the book, because the few days of work I put into the book probably had more to do with it being therapy following the break-up with my wife than it being an actually decent idea for a book, though the memory of the idea is still bouncing around in my head, which is why my discovery of this strangely similar timeline of Internet history seemed so darn familiar.

I'm pretty sure that 90% of the stuff listed here was stuff that I covered, at one point or another, in "Caught in the 'Net" and is stuff that would have found its way into my own History of the Internet project. Thankfully, the fine folks at this site have done the work for me, in a far more concise form. And, also, in a far funnier way than my project likely would have turned out to be.

Anyone with more than five years of time spent on the Internet should give that link a quick look, for a walk down memory lane -- and a few chuckles along the way.

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