Retro Video: when Internet was civil
I love the quote from playwright John Allen, who really understood how "Internet" could connect physically disparate affinity groups. John also says, "there's an interesting kind of restraint that you find. ...There's not a lot of put-downs... not screenfulls of 'go to hell.'" My how times of changed. These days anonymity and "Internet" are synonymous with flame wars and cyberbullying. One can only hope that recent pleas for civility on the web will get us back to these good ol' days of newsgroups and bulletin boards.
We'll keep an eye out for more retro videos and post them here.
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Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dach said 6:15PM on 2-05-2009
I like how the terminology changed over the course of the 6½ minute piece, from "Internet" to "the internet" and even just "the net." Could that be the first meme?
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GRTerrero said 7:12PM on 2-05-2009
I believe that PC was the first meme. Followed by computer virus and then, computer crash, and then sh*t!
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Rocketboy said 7:15PM on 2-05-2009
$200 a year? Screw that. I'll stick with my FREE BBS'es thank you very much.
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Muffin_man said 7:48PM on 2-05-2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ
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Victor Agreda Jr said 8:44PM on 2-05-2009
Heh, yeah, that was the video I was going to post NEXT week.
joem said 11:10PM on 2-05-2009
And what about the porn?! Surely that existed a-plenty, even back then...
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WolvenSpectre said 11:23PM on 2-05-2009
Ah, I remember cringing and feeling a little bit excited when I watched that segment on CBC's flagship nightly news "The National" with the man who introduced the segment Peter Mansbridge (still the Achorman only allot more bald).
Trust me people in the know already knew it was called "The Internet" it was supposedly an error on the part of a researcher that everyone not being sure one way or the other repeated all the way up the chain.
Its still available online in a bit better quality in the CBC archives here (segment 6): http://archives.cbc.ca/science_technology/computers/topics/1738/
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Mike said 8:32AM on 2-06-2009
It was indeed a great time -- it was before the commercialisation of the Internet and before spam. It was also before kids got access, so most of the discussions were, as the program says, between mature and educated people (most people then got access via a university).
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harmacy said 7:52AM on 2-07-2009
I love the quote from playwright John Allen when he says "The thing though that I'm always left with when I leave is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted, and the only way they feel rooted is through another person" (i.e. "root" being slang for "sexual intercourse" here in New Zealand and many other parts of the world!!!).
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