The internet can be a scary, unpredictable place!
It’s not the 90s, but it’s still Aaron Sorkin. And “The West Wing”…
No caption necessary.
“First Nation in Cyberspace” - TIME, 1993
Various excerpts from the article, though I suggest reading the whole thing:
“The Internet, for those who haven’t been hanging out in cyberspace, reading the business pages or following Doonesbury, is the mother of all computer networks — an anarchistic electronic freeway that has spread uncontrollably and now circles the globe. It is at once the shining archetype and the nightmare vision of the information highway that the Clinton Administration has been touting and that the telephone and cable-TV companies are racing to build…And because of its cold war roots, the Internet has one quality that makes it a formidable competitor: you couldn’t destroy it if you tried.”
“Suddenly the Internet is the place to be. College students are queuing up outside computing centers to get online. Executives are ordering new business cards that show off their Internet addresses.”
“How big is the Internet? Part of its mystique is that nobody knows for sure.”
“The Internet, however, will have to go through some radical changes before it can join the world of commerce. Subsidized for so long by the Federal Government, its culture is not geared to normal business activities. It does not take kindly to unsolicited advertisements; use electronic mail to promote your product and you are likely to be inundated with hate mail directed not only at you personally but also at your supervisor, your suppliers and your customers as well. ‘It’s a perfect Marxist state, where almost nobody does any business,” says Farber. “But at some point that will have to change.’”
(Source: TIME)
- 1993, The New Yorker
Mitch Kapor said of this cartoon: “the true sign that popular interest has reached critical mass came this summer when the New Yorker printed a cartoon showing two computer-savvy canines.”
Have any questions about “the net”? This video will explain them for you, circa 1996.
Even moms were using the internet in the 90s.
An infomercial about the internet on the internet.
"I have this fear [about the internet] that I’m going to be trying to find out what movie is playing at what theater and then I’m suddenly going to be a member of Al-Qaeda."
—
Winona Ryder, 2010
(it’s winona ryder so it counts)
"This just in: the Internet is not a fad."
— Vice President Hoynes, “The West Wing,” 1999
