The old days are gone.. a stroll down amnesia lane: The internet that once was

Had a family discussion tonight about the amazing web history… My sister reminded me of the mid 90s when I slept her over house and my brother-in-law connected us to the net, via the dial up phone line, for the first time. It was like stepping into uncharted territory.. dialing up to watch a website load, it taking three minutes.. and you being a part of the information superhighway.

Those glorious days of ugly GIFs and badly designed websites.. those days of 60+ search engines instead of Google dominating.. those days of “Chat lines” that adults said to stay away from (Chat1.com was my favorite).. Yes, indeed, the wild west of the web was at your fingertips, you just had to stick around for a while to let the web load.

Things then weren’t really “live.” But if you searched enough you were able to find some cutting edge sites. Artbell.com, drudgereport.com, and some others were on the fringe. They charted territory for the future. And Geocities and Angelfire in reality could be considered the first blogs. People on them told a personal story.. the 20th century unplugged was on free sites with really long web links. Now it’s blogger and Tumblr and… well, you know the rest.

And why do I bring this up? Well, because first off I can and secondly because it shows how far we have come. From the days when you can be anonymous online to the current world where everyone knows your name, along with A/S/L and what you are currently eating, or drinking, or thinking.

The mid 90s in my opinion was the greatest time for the web. It was exciting and fresh.. it was amazing and new. And now it’s stale and everyone, governments and corporations combined, just want to control it.

Remember when it was fun to dial up and be connected? And wen you met someone in a chat room you did not trust, you just quick reached around and unplugged the phone line from the wall. Those were the days. Safety first, submission of personal data second. How things have changed..

I remember a computer was my Christmas gift in the later 90s.. I remember I had no clue what I was doing. I just hooked up and, well, suddenly the world was at my fingertips. I even remember when I figured out how to design a website (And if you know anything about me you know that HorroReport.com is my other site and it has maintained the same design since 2001, for better or worse.)

And now here we are.. the net is everywhere, you are connected no matter where you go. I think I liked the dial up disconnect. The ability to stop the net for a while and just hang up on the worldwide web of superinformation on a superhighway.

Those days are gone. Here are the days of Facebook.. constantly being connected.. and in a way constantly being disconnected. People went from visiting online to living online. Tumbling through things to Tumblering through things. From posting photos occasionally to lifestreaming, livevideo, and live everything.

The wild days of the net are gone. The predictable days of the net are here.

Bring back the 90s, when everything was fresh and new.

But it can’t be that way.

No matter how many moving GIFs you put on your site..