This drives me nuts. I still hear folks on TV and radio refer to the forward slash as a “backslash.” I assume this comes from the old DOS days but I have no idea why it’s still so commonly mangled.
The Future Sound of London “ISDN” album (compilation of stuff live streamed, well, over ISDN) was 1994, so maybe that gets some points. I’d not be surprised if the winner was some obscure Goa/Trance/alien-mushrooms-elves-eating-2CB type of outfit from the first years of the 90s.
Other possible, digging around-- a techno thing called Info Superhighway by 2 Unlimited from '94?
I was going to suggest Unbelievable Truth’s Landslide but on examination, the lyric is “We’re caught in a net.”
The into song to The Kids’ Guide to the Internet is from 1997. It’s also the greatest song made by human beings.
Pete returned to his concept of “The Grid” in his 1993 album Psychoderelict:
“Deeper Understanding” by Kate Bush, released in 1989, doesn’t specifically mention the internet , but rather a ‘computer program’ that connects her to either a distant other person or a programmed avatar. Either way, it very precisely predicted how dating and sex relationships would become filtered through computers.
Others: use of term “internet” (found a good search engine)
1995:
Bowie in Algeria Touchshriek
Ace of Base (?!) in Strange Ways
Momus in Virtual Valerie
The Amps in Tipp City
Lots of others show up in '96 and '97.
I can’t find any credible entries from '94.
(I mean, Bowie? Yeah, of course. I can see it (surprised I didn’t remember it). The Amps? Sure. Momus? No surprise, I guess. Ace of Base? … Not usually on my ‘avant garde’ band list)
Another early song that references connected-up computers is Warren Zevon’s Networking from 1989.
Were people generally calling it “the internet” back then, though?
I first got online in 1989, but we just called it Andrew, because that was the name of Carnegie Mellon’s network and there wasn’t a whole lot we did outside of CMU-related stuff. There just wasn’t much out there other than email (few people had it in those days) and some usenet groups.
Anybody know when “internet” came into common usage?
The term takes off from near zero in 1990. Looking at that graph, I’d put 1994 as the year it went common.
We called it the Internet when we got on back in 1988.
I was in college in the early 90s and for many people The Internet was just E-mail because that’s all they used it for so they would call all of it “e-mail”.
We got on for Usenet newsgroups.
I suspect Surfing on the Web, written in 1993, was the first song to mention the web. The band was made up of CERN employees, and their picture is supposedly the first one to appear on the web.
They don’t use the word “internet” though.
Me too! I spent years on the Straight Dope Usenet group in fact. But most people ignored those.
Oh cool! Thanks.
I’m surprised there are no “chat room” songs. There was a time when everybody who otherwise knew zilch about computers somehow were familiar with at least the term “chat room”. I still hear it from people who are proudly anti-computer. I tried once to explain forums to a Luddite coworker, and the response was, “duhh, is that like a chat room?”:rolleyes:
There were a ton of novelty songs floating around Usenet and BBS’s, many of which naturally dealt with computers. I’m sure someone could dig out a lot of very early examples of the use of various internet-related terms from archives of those sources, though I’m not sure that kind of song is what the OP is looking for, since I imagine few of those songs were ever actually performed.