What the Fran

Thirty years on the web

Winther is hosting the Bear blog carnival on early web memories and it is perfect timing.

I first went on the internet sometime October or November 1995. So, thirty years ago. I was twelve. I remember it distinctly. I looked at sites about Netherland dwarf rabbits, a band, and ketchup. Because my dad, when explaining the internet, said you could find information about anything and everything. Even ketchup. He was right.

There was a palpable handmade, real person feeling. Even the 'search engines' were real people making directories. The surfing the web analogy was so real. Not only being able to move across the web. It felt like surfing. Being on the edge of something moving out and out.

It also coincided nicely with my teenage years. One dial up tone away from anywhere in the world, reading anything. That freedom was such a formative experience for me. And crucial. Fandom and literature and history and politics and so many voices I wouldn't have heard anywhere else.

I remember when newsreaders or tv presenters would plug a website, laboriously reading out "colon, forward slash, forward slash" and the concept having to be constantly explained. Like it was this niche thing. Like it might not catch on.

In 1999 I made my first geocities site, ending up with several. They were a fun time. Everyone really felt like they were in it together. I met so many people. Pretty importantly, my wife.

The feeling, though I hardly appreciated it at the time, was that people did things because they cared about them.

And honestly, the web still feels like this to me. There are so many amazing things out here. I'm not going to use a platform like Bear, and an event like this blog carnival, all part of the amazing indieweb ecosystem that's going full renaissance, to complain about the state of the internet. Of course I'd love the web to have more indie stuff, be less evil, but I'm not going to say it's all doom and gloom. It's not!

I'm sure this optimism is largely because I just don't see the worst of the internet. Which is deliberate! I don't go there. I don't want to know. I got in at a great time and that imprinted on me an idea of what the web can be - is - that I've never let go of.

Stuff that feels like then, or has been around since then:

As an homage I made Ketchupland. Mostly this blog, tiny personal essay, meets ketchup review site? I dunno. And I didn't get much done. But it was fun.

#links #prompts