# Is the WWW overrated as a revolution? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 1, 2015, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579 "2015-09-01T04:48:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/41 "2015-09-11T12:52:38Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > And Sex. > The WWW would have been a real revolution if it had somehow included sex. It did include porn. Question for the old time Net users here: was there Internet porn in the 80s, like FTP files you could download? Or at least written erotica? ---
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/42 "2015-09-11T12:57:24Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > No doubt. And saying something like the Web was inevitable basically discounts every invention ever. > > The world wide web was a massive sea change in how connectivity existed in the world. It was around as a niche thing before. WWW made it an accessible, commercial enterprise actual normal people could use. It’s like the difference between aviation of the 1910s and commercial airlines. Or automobiles before and after the internal combustion engine and mass production. > > And Al Gore was instrumental in the creation of the Internet, obtaining government funding for projects on it as a congressman as far back as the 70s. Vint Cerf and others went out of their way to defend Gore’s contributions. So you’re saying the Web (an app, essentially) is a bigger revolution than the TCP/IP protocol and computer networking itself? Even though AOL, Gopher etc were popular before the Web really came on the scene around 95-96. And email was already commercially widespread by 92 or so, even as far back as the 80s in some cases. It wasn’t like we went directly from ARPANET to the Web. As far as the Web discounting other inventions, the University of Kansas created software that was almost identical to the Web just a year later without any knowledge of Berners-Lee’s browser. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/43 "2015-09-11T13:26:06Z")
The revolutionary device was the transistor. I hate to say this because Shockley was an ass, but it is so. The IC followed within 12 years and then microcomputers 15 years that. The early networks were inevitable and so were the internet and then the web. Yes, various people were involved at each stage, and it could have come out somewhat differently, but I don’t think anything could have stopped it. For myself, I got my first computer in 1982 and the early networks made it possible to collaborate with someone 1000 miles and two weeks by mail away. In 1984, I got email and that made a huge difference. Then along came archie, a master’s project, which suggests that it was not very profound. I didn’t actually use the web till 2001 because I didn’t want to pay for DSL and dialup was too slow. I am still too cheap for any kind of I-phone. I am content to wait till I am home to get web access. Also I find those tiny “keyboards” unusable. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/44 "2015-09-11T16:54:47Z")
> [@protoboard](#): > > Question for the old time Net users here: was there Internet porn in the 80s, like FTP files you could download? Or at least written erotica? There was plenty of porn on Usenet, which started in 1980, but not as high-quality as today’s porn, because it lacked the bandwidth. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/45 "2015-09-11T20:57:33Z")
What is now the WWW began as a US DoD (aka Military) scheme to use the ATT phone network as a backup for CandC (Command and Control) in the event that the USSR (once and future Russian Empire) managed to wipe out the DoD’s own network. Its use spread slowly - it was, after all, the property of DoD. The revolution was when the DoD gave the keys to an international body and the network bloomed worldwide. (I will now be corrected) But yes, when a bombed-out Somali can find a map and info on how to get from Hell on Earth to Europe, yeah - that is kinda hard to overstate the importance. W’s war on Saddam was possibly the first time the world could get live reports from the people being attacked - in real time. In Vietnam, the footage shot by American reporters could make the 6:00 News. Now you can get live video from the ‘enemy’ as your country is killing them. Try overstating the effect of THAT. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579/46 "2015-09-11T21:19:31Z")
> [@protoboard](#): > > It did include porn. > > Question for the old time Net users here: was there Internet porn in the 80s, like FTP files you could download? Or at least written erotica? Absolutely. And you could print pictures composed of various ASCII characters to your dot-matrix printer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-www-overrated-as-a-revolution/729579.md?page=2)