The Web at 25: I was a teenage dial-up addict

[steve2470]

(not me, the author lol )

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57619807-1/the-web-at-25-i-was-a-teenage-dial-up-addict/



This World Wide Web you're looking at right now wasn't always something most people considered worth a second glance -- let alone hours days weeks years of nonstop staring.

In fact, even some of the big info-nerds of the day ignored or dismissed it early on.
One of the earliest public demonstrations of the Web came back in 1991, when a man named Tim Berners-Lee sat at a table with a computer in a Texas hotel conference room, willing to give anyone with a few minutes to spare a personal introduction to his invention -- a concept and a structure that would soon spark a worldwide information revolution.

Every person in the room that day likely came to depend on this invention by the close of the 1990s, if not sooner. But when first confronted with the Web in that hotel, most simply said whatever the equivalent of "meh" was at the time, and went in search of a drink.

"It was quite a warm December evening in San Antonio," recalled Professor Wendy Hall of the UK's University of Southampton, who was in that room for the 1991 Hypertext Conference where Berners-Lee had been denied a speaking spot to show off the most important human creation of a generation or three. "In the courtyard outside the demo room was a tequila fountain and everybody was outside drinking free margaritas, so nobody was inside. This was the first demo of the World Wide Web in America.