Picking 1997 as a start date is interesting because that's when ISP's had started serving Internet access to general public in Turkey. The state had subsidized this by waiving phone-call costs when dialing an ISP. That had caused sudden increase in Internet's popularity. I remember staying online until morning chatting on IRC, downloading stuff, browsing the web, playing MUD. Great times.
I first heard about ICQ in 1997 too (UINs were still 6 digits at the time), but dismissed it because I thought it was ridiculous to make yourself always available for messaging. It didn't make any sense to me at all. But, the world had other plans. The next year, when all of my friends were using it, I could only get a 8-digit UIN.
Today, I can relate even more so than ever to my ICQ-skeptic self from 1997 though.
Picking 1997 as a start date is interesting because that's when ISP's had started serving Internet access to general public in Turkey. The state had subsidized this by waiving phone-call costs when dialing an ISP. That had caused sudden increase in Internet's popularity. I remember staying online until morning chatting on IRC, downloading stuff, browsing the web, playing MUD. Great times.
MUDs were awesome. Usenet too, IRC, then IM like ICQ and AIM.
I first heard about ICQ in 1997 too (UINs were still 6 digits at the time), but dismissed it because I thought it was ridiculous to make yourself always available for messaging. It didn't make any sense to me at all. But, the world had other plans. The next year, when all of my friends were using it, I could only get a 8-digit UIN.
Today, I can relate even more so than ever to my ICQ-skeptic self from 1997 though.
My girlfriend and I pounced on ICQ in that year. I wound up with UIN# 279866.
And then ICQ was invaded and subverted by Russia. I mean pervasively. Just like LiveJournal was, later on.
I have come to believe that these were simply psyops that were a bit less anticipated than TikTok was.
Imagine the power of Russian threat actors knowing when and where every kid was online and wanting to chat, and who all their friends were.
I read the title as an epitaph.
Internet in 1997. That is when the web was small enough that you did not need Google, you just used a 1200 page "internet yellow pages" book [1]
Around that time the book form became untennable so they started switching to CDROM versions [2]
[1] https://archive.org/details/luckmansworldwid0000unse_1997ed/... [2] https://archive.org/details/new-riders-www-yellow-pages-1997
Peacock Maps published a poster titled "The Whole Internet" with data collected in 1999. I think they had a second one in the early 2000s. This was the best I could find: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~3...
The title made me think it's a type of eulogy to the pre-AI, pre-ChatGPT Internet, but I was pleasantly surprised by pretty colours instead!
(2021) Really needs an update, as IPv6 in China picks up.
Also, can this data collection see enough of internal China traffic?