In the early 90s I got a “shell” internet account - basically a Unix prompt in a telnet window. Primarily to access usenet groups.
One of my coworkers also had an account, and one day he gets all excited telling me about something called Mosaic (Netscape’s predecessor). He built a version of it on our local network, and I thought ‘this is nice, this might become popular in the computer community.’ I would have never dreamed that it would turn into something my mom would end up using.
At the time when we got the VAIO in ‘99, as mentioned above, I was waiting for my work permit to arrive, and couldn’t work. So I had all day to discover the web. I went looking for Beatles tape trading sites, record collectors’ sites and fora, and of course, porn, like everyone else (right?). I remember the first time I tried to close a porn site and got about a hundred extra windows opening up. I panicked and pulled the plug out of the wall. After that, there was always something wrong with how Windows 95 worked. That was finally solved after upgrading to Windows 98. That computer is still going, having had 512 MB RAM added, an upgrade to Windows 2000, and a second hard drive, and it’s had a couple of power supplies and a new CPU fan, but it’s still working as advertised. My wife is on the web on it now.
I first plugged a 300 baud modem into my Commodore 64 in about 1985, and logged onto Compuserve. (That woulda made me about 33 …)
My first web surfing experience was when I was still on AOL v2.0 in 1994. v2.0 had the ability to view web pages, but it was still in beta so it didn’t do a very good job. I surfed anyways and found some of the coolest sites for downloading games and stuff. It got so bad that I gave up downloading for lent that year. 
I first used the net back in 90 maybe? 91 or so? I remember using BBS and lots and lots of telnet/gopher/ftp stuff. This was on a good ol’ blazing fast 2800. Then after a couple of years or so I remember using Mosaic of all things. It took so long to download anything, and most of it wasn’t very interesting to me anyway, that I didn’t do it too much. I never did use AOL though. My town had a local freenet. I was probably one of the first ten people to sign up outside of the people who actually ran it. Ahhh… those were the days when I thought Pine was a high tech e-mail program. I would’ve only been about 11 at the time.
1996, in the late lamented Cybersmith Cafe in Harvard Square. Mostly Usenet, via Dejanews, and theatrical websites (ones about the theater, not ones that were overly pretentious or anything). Playbill On-line is one of the oldest and just had its tenth anniversary. I remember one time when I clicked on a link, read an article, and when I came back to the front page it had changed! While I was reading the site! I realized the magic of the Web right then and there.
The cafe had Macs but they weren’t my computers so I can’t give you any tech stuff. All I know is that it was very very fast–probably 56k modems at first.
It was around 1995-1996. I was about 12 or 13. I remember going to Ty’s website to learn about Beanie Babies. Yeah, I’m a young’n. . .or I was.
First time I surfed the web was in 1993 using the text-only browser Lynx. There were hyperlinks but no images, of course. Gopher dominated the day, there wasn’t much information on the web yet. I spent most of my time on BBS’s reading about hacking and manufacturing drugs, also chatting on IRC.
I had a smokin’ 2400bps modem but connected to a 1200bps modem. Times were strange in that dialup modems often were slower than one’s home gear because so many of them had to be purchased.
There was something mesmerizing about realizing that I could chat with pagans from Argentina about Simpsons episodes at any hour of day or night… so mesmerizing in fact that I dropped out of medical school. It was a powerful, powerful drug. But it did get me into the computing business where I’ve done better than I would have as a physician, so I guess I can’t complain.
Worked at a university… same as now. 20+ years later.
Gopher, MOSAIC , et alia. Some telnet. More usenet. I made a definitive web page about ME. Don’t think I’ve changed it since 1996 or so.
Gawd… I’m old.
Our first “pc’s” had 8086 chips in them. And I was the envy of our group becuase the ‘monitor’ I had was capable of showing more than green on black.
1990 or 1991. 1200 baud modem, local BBS. I still remember it well: Leather & Lace, in Anchorage, AK. All text. Something about UNIX, and being able to connect with some university computer systems.
I chatted a lot in those days.
1995, I was 31. I had just purchased my second PC, the first one with a modem (28.8). I’d heard vague references to the internet but didn’t know exactly what it was. My younger sister asked me to subscribe to Compuserve because she wanted to run a part-time travel agent business online. It only took me an hour or so to get hooked.
I was in the computer lab at school, downloading some files via FTP and got curious about this alias on the Desktop to a program called “Mosaic”. 1991 or '92. No images, just text, some of which was underlined and when you clicked on it it would take you to a different page — whoa, cool!
My first INTERNET experience predated that a bit. I had email since 1988 and subscribed to Info-Mac Digest (among other things) and downloaded interesting-looking shareware via FTP from sumex-aim.standord.edu (and later, its mirror sites).
We had BITNET as well as INTERNET. Anyone else remember BITNET?
I bought a 2400 baud modem to have at home so that I could access my account on the IBM 3090 mainframe where I received my email, and soon got into BBS services (more shareware!).
I believe Mosaic came out in 1993.
I think I was , so it was 92 or 93. We had AOL (some insanely early version) connecting through a 28.8 modem. The modem was, of course, external, with lots of blinky lights. The computer was a Gateway 386 or something barbaric like that. Cutting-edge at the time, with its Windows 3.1 and all…
How did it work before the web as we know it? As Little Nemo said, surfing for BBS’s? (just for my own amusement, I’ll say it): I’m way too young to remember any of that.
Exactly. Anyone who thinks they were ‘surfing the web’ before then are either mistaken or not applying the term correctly. (And pre-integrated AOL and Compuserve don’t count either, they weren’t “the web”, just a particularly large private clubs)
I first surfed in the Summer 0f 1993, visiting a friend at work for lunch. He wanted to show me this new internet application called “Mosaic”. I remember that there wasn’t a whole lot of sites to be found, and they were mostly academic. I was also sceptical about it taking off; it was fine for those within the academic community who had the internal bandwidth, but who else could afford a website and had the time to download all those massive graphics?? We were talking kilobytes here!
:rolleyes: Reading the above I sound kind of dogmatic. Just IMHO, obviously
Somewhere in the mid 90’s with my super snazzy 14.4 modem, going onto the Gay BBS and paying some schmuck in Glendale $5 per month for access.
I remember telling someone there was something new called the internet and he actually thought I was talking about something med students put on their hair when they watched surgical operations.
Ah how they will laugh when they recall how primitive we were in 2005 without hologram portals and still used keyboards and something called a “mouse”.
I first used the internet as a freshman in college in 1995 (I was 18). It took until November for me to discover that the computers in the labs had internet access. My parents got an internet connection too about a month later - until that point we’d lived in a little town that none of the then-popular internet providers had local access numbers for.
I was 25 if I remember correctly, used either a 14.4 or a 28.8 modem, and also signed on via shudder AOL. I don’t really miss those days.