Tedium Highlight in Internet history: Internet Relay Chat beat Slack to real-time chat by decades and helped define much of our early online culture, yet way more people use Slack. Why is that? 

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Tag results: Internet history

What Was ISDN?

For decades, the telephone industry supported a new technology designed to make copper lines more useful to the average consumer. It’s great—if you’re a voice actor.

The Next Chapter

Online culture sure feels like it’s in a transition phase, doesn’t it? In an attempt to understand what we learned this week, let’s compare it to some prior internet-era shifts.

Free As In Internet

In the '80s, a defining online phenomenon—being able to use the internet for free—came from (of all places) Cleveland. Here’s the story of the Free-Net.

The Central Question

What is the difference between centralization and decentralization, and what should you know? I was asked this question recently; here’s my attempt to answer.

The Dial-Up Volunteer Army

Considering the fact that many early online networks relied on volunteers to help build up their base—until one such network, AOL, got too big.

Dr. Koop’s Digital Korner

How famed U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, at the age of 82, became an internet entrepreneur, and why his namesake website burned out, fast.

By Our Powers Combined …

How the webring became the grassroots tool of choice for sharing content online in the ‘90s. The concept was social media before media was social.

The Internet's First Election

The web wasn't common in 1992, but presidential candidates notably took baby steps toward the internet that year—Ross Perot in a bigger way than most.

No More Eternal Septembers

For decades, technical users looking down on the less knowledgeable have set the stage for a lot of bad online discourse. Can those users break the chain?

FTP Fadeout

The beating heart of the early internet may have been FTP, or file transfer protocol. But after 50 years of mainstream use, its demise may be imminent.

News In Small Bytes

Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.

We Were Promised Skynet

Satellite internet was once seen as a holy grail of connect-anywhere online access. It hasn’t worked yet, but the promise is closer than ever.

The Internet’s Many Branches

The evolution of the top-level domain, a solution to a technical problem that has evolved into something with lots of cultural and marketing value.

The Original Internet Bottleneck

Many early ISPs—particularly AOL—weren’t ready to offer unlimited internet access in the mid-’90s. That is, until a surprising disruptor appeared: AT&T.

Thanks, Craig

Hitting its 25th anniversary this month, Craigslist remains a reminder that a more democratic version of the internet can still thrive.

The Inbox Pioneer

For more than 25 years, this newsletter author has been snarking wise about weird news. Here’s the tale of This is True, one of the first inbox success stories.

Internet Synthesis Protocol

How the professional-minded MIDI format, for an incredibly short but memorable period of time, became the primary way music was shared on the internet.

The Wires Barely Reach

It took a while for the internet to turn into a major global force, but it wasn't for lack of trying. (Peter Gabriel deserves at least some of the credit.)

Jumping-Off Point

What the heck is a jumpstation, and why did it fade from internet nomenclature? It’s complicated, but the web’s first search engine is in there somewhere.

Driver Disaster

Why USB ports changed the world for the better, or what I learned from a futile month of trying to get a 25-year-old webcam working on a modern PC.
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