30 years ago, one decision altered the course of our connected world

Didn’t want to start a new thread about this so posting this here.

Doing laundry and Back to the Future II came on. It’s funny to see how in 1985 this morning got nearly everything wrong about 2015.
The only recognizable thing I can see is that there is 80’s nostalgia and it looks like Doc Brown has a smart watch.

Even the “hoverboard” in the movie is nothing like what we call Hoverboards.

 

I can’t believe we had to pay for internet by the minute. Kids these days will never understand.

 

The PC Junior was the schiznit!

 

Long live Frank…
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/09/frank-zappa-invents-filesharing-model

 

I remember when the WWW was hooked up at AOL.com - changed everything.

I honestly don't think we as a species are completely ready for the WWW and what it does to people - always being connected is not a great thing.

DD

 

I remember my first 2400 baud modem. Some weird, creepy stuff on those dial-in BBS's back in the day.

That and lots of ASCII p*rn.

 

NSFW

Spoiler

( . )( . )

 

crazyjoe@compuserve.net

 

I remember hauling my 100mhz cyrix pc to my grandparents house to show my cousins the Pam Anderson pictures I had on re-written AOL floppy disks.

Also, I remember war-dialing and phreaking and knowing just enough to get into big trouble. At some point, a past time was to type random words into the address bar and see what would pop up.... then looking for weird easter eggs hidden in the page. Then, that terrible movie "The Net" came out and the whole endeavor was instantly lame.

 

@Jontro

 

Hotbot and altavista on mosaic browser FTW. I think I found clutch's original website with the tilde in the address on hotbot.

 

From 1993. AT&T got most of these right.

 

I remember playing chess on the first chess server in the world while in college, at that time it was just a server between universities and the chess pieces were letters and board were just created with under scores and pipes, the good old days. (ICS was the name of server).

 

The sweet sound of dial up, and people not being able to get through to us on the phone while we were online.

 

I learned the "M0" AT command command quickly to shut that mess off. I don't know why I still remember that command. Maybe because the sound the modem made was so painful and traumatic.

My parents finally ok'ed getting a second line for myself after I kept hogging up the phone line for my computer and their friends saying the phone line was always busy.That was a major thing since my parents didn't understand why I needed a separate line and never wanted to spend money on anything.

 

And now we carry the internet around in our pocket, we are so old.

 

The one thing they didn't get right was the company that will bring it to you as that version of AT&T isn't the curent AT&T which at that time was SBC.

 

For those who don't remember this is what Back to the Future predicted 2015 would be like.


Personally I'm glad we don't have flying cars there would be flying gridlock and imagine what we would be paying in insurance.

 

Yeah, but they were all AT&T before they were broken up and put back together again.