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maelorin at 09:13pm on 24/11/2004
maelorin at 09:13pm on 24/11/2004yoinked from
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abikuWhen did you first discover the World Wide Web?
since i was involved in the early days of it's dissemination and development in australia, must have been sometime early-mid 1992What browser did you use?
lynx for text browsing, viola on x-terms in 1993, and an in-house browser based upon an ongoing hypertext research 'platform'. can't for the life of me remember the webserver.Were you on the internet before the WWW?
hell yes. been online permanently since 1989. first permanent connection via apanaWhat was your first username or handle?
cripes. i've had so many over the years. i think i settled on maelorin for my (main) public persona in the mid-1990s ...Do you remember the first word or phrase you typed into a search engine?
before that a few i do remember include: quasimodo, satan, natasha, tears, nevets, seven, re#, reHash, cript, Dcat, cheshirecat, reDkinG,
hell no.
playing with the www was not the first time, nor the last time, that i got to play with something new in it's incubation. then got cut adrift by circumstance. but hey, it's been fun. it is fun.
i really do enjoy the incubation period of new ideas. and this has me thinking about some things i haven't thought about for a long time.
the introduction of new technologies into societies is always surrounded by a host of social issues. resistance, acceptance, subversion. regulation, rejection. eventually accommodation. it's these processes (among other things) that fascinates me and draws me back to new technologies.
it is these issues that i enjoy exploring in good sci-fi. and it is these that i enjoy playing with as a lawyer. it is why i began the journey to be a lawyer in the first place.
An Annotated Edited Early History of the WWW
1991
1991 December: Poster and demonstration at Hypertext'91 in San Antonio, Texas US).my supervisor-to-be also presented at this conference. she brought home an interest in html and www.
1992
1992 July: Distribution of WWW through CernLib, including Viola. WWW library code ported to DECnet.someone at flinders picked up a copy of this code and began porting portions to run on their system.
1993
1993 January: By now, Midas Tony Johnson, SLAC), Erwise HUT), and Viola Pei Wei, O'Reilly Associates) browsers are available for X; CERN Mac browser ECP) released as alpha. Around 50 known HTTP servers.we the postgrads in the hypermedia/database group) grabbed a copy of viola and began tinkering with html and the www. the sysadmins in comp sci set up an internal http server.1993 February: NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X". Computing seminar at CERN
mosaic was a hit in comp sci at flinders. undergrads and postgrads alike were eager to play with it..1993 March: WWW presented at Online Publishing 93, Pittsburgh.
this was an ok conference. i think i traded the toys for something frivolous. [oh, hang on. i think i gave them to the guy who helped me get the early connection ...]1993 March: The Acceptable Use Policy prohibiting commercial use of the Internet re-interpreted., so that it becomes becomes allowed.
ostensibly to encourage investment in developing the www. consequently we get advertising and more) porn.1993 April 30: Date on the declaration by CERN's directors that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to CERN. A milestone document.
yep. didn't stop others from making money from it though.
1994
1994 January: O'Reilly, Spry, etc announce "Internet in a Box" product to bring the Web into homes.yeah. boy was that a flop. and encouraged mr gates ...1994 March: Marc Andreessen and colleagues leave NCSA to form "Mosaic Communications Corp" later Netscape).
yay! netscape. more yay! for mozilla. less yay for netscape buyout by aol. meh.1994 May 25-27: First International WWW Conference, CERN, Geneva. Heavily oversubscribed 800 apply, 400 allowed in)
didn't get a gig at this one. a few months later i was out of the msc and heading north for the llb ...
geeky