Internet Flashback
- Posted by Beth on March 20th, 2008 filed in Cool link of the day, General, Internet, Pseudogeek stuff, Video
This is pretty cool–wanna see what the internet looked like in the mid-90’s (eons ago, in internet time)? God, it sucked back then. Imagine how much better it will/should be ten years from now.
Lately, I’ve started collecting old VHS tapes about the Internet from the early- to mid-1990s. While most of these are pretty corny — think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing — they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don’t exist anywhere else. The Internet Archive’s earliest snapshots were in late 1996, so anything before that is extremely sparse. The videos, silly as they are, still represent valuable documentation of the early web.
I spent most of the day yesterday working on a workflow to digitize VHS tapes, settling on VCR to MiniDV camera my Macbook Pro with Firewire. These tapes are pretty worn, so the quality’s not great, but that almost adds to their charm.
Here’s the result: the first volume of a two-tape collection called “Internet Power!” from 1995. I’ve included some select quotes and screenshots below.
This is just the video, but you need to go read the quotes and links, too.
wxwzrd says:
Bringing back some old memories–especially when looking at that version of windows! :) As they used to say in the old Virginia Slims cigarette commercials (for those old enough to remember!), “You’ve come a long way, baby!”
raz0r says:
But at least you could surf teh internets using dial-up and actually find what you wanted using Alta Vista. And who had heard of Spam outside of the local grocery store.