The Internet Past and Present

- 2001.10.19

Email, the Internet, and newsgroups began for me - as it did for many other people - in about 1994 with one central application. There were a number of them available; America Online, eWorld, Prodigy, and CompuServe were among the most popular. We signed up for America Online and received its benefits. Instant messages, email, newsgroups, FTP, and, of course, the Internet.

Back then you could access AOL with a Macintosh Plus and 4 MB of RAM. I remember downloading software and screen savers by FTP. AOL provided pretty much direct access to FTP, and you could download software updates and shareware/freeware right in the AOL application. If you downloaded the optional browser, you could have access to the Internet with AOL and look up almost anything you could think of.

The Internet has changed a lot since 1995, some for the better, some for the worse. In the mid 90s, most of the Internet was text-based, occasionally containing a few images. Right now, it is almost impossible to find a site without 5 or 6 images. Many sites use Java, Shockwave, and Flash animation, which greatly slows down the Internet - especially for those who don't have high speed Internet access or use an older computer. I prefer a good solid site with text and few pictures - no Flash, Java, or other things to slow your browsing experience down.

The latest version of AOL requires a Power Macintosh with Mac OS 7.5.5 and at least 16 MB of RAM (32 MB for OS 8.5). Many of the other ISPs are gone or have updated their programs so that they are completely different from how they used to be. A good example of this is CompuServe. These days, it is just like AOL in appearance and functions - in fact, it is owned by AOL.

AOL offers much more than it used to. You can now get news, movie clips, audio clips, weather, and much more.

You can also do the same from your Web browser. The QuickTime Web site is a good place to go for movie trailers. You can get news from the Apple start page. If tech news is what you're after, TechNN is a great place for that. Weather can be obtained from the Weather Channel website. Search engines have been much improved. With Google, you can search for images, text, or browse the Web by category.

It used to be somewhat hard to find things on the Internet (I might look up "dog" and get something written by a 10 year old telling the world why she loves her dog so much), but these days it is hard not to find what you are looking for. (In many search engines, you can omit things from the results. If I wanted information about a dog, I could type in "girl" in the "words to omit" box, and it would only display those things that did not contain that word.) With all of the new technologies for searching, there is almost no way you can miss what you want to find.

Newsgroups can now be found both on the Internet and in Entourage or Outlook Express. There is a newsgroup for almost any topic that you might think of, from Macintosh computers to antique porcelain.

You can send and receive instant messages with the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) program, talk to your online buddies with your microphone, and send files back and forth through AIM. You can also change color, font, and style of the text. None of that was possible in AOL 2.7.

FTP is still around and very useful. With an FTP client like Fetch (yes, it's still around - and for Mac OS X, too), you can download some great shareware and freeware applications. You can still do it in AOL by typing "FTP" in the keyword box.

These days the Internet is more than an online encyclopedia, and you no longer need an "all in one" ISP to experience all of the things the Internet can offer. You can now do your banking online, buy books online (Amazon.com), bid on online auctions (eBay), and more. However, you do have to be careful. Don't give out private information, such as credit card numbers, your address, and your telephone number, unless it's a secure site and you trust it with your personal information.

Next week: what to do if you aren't getting the Internet performance you want.