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Particularly popular were the chat rooms, where people with similar interests—computers, sex, soap operas—could gather. They could even go off into “private rooms” to talk by mutual consent or, at the other extreme, visit one of the “auditoriums” that might feature a session with a celebrity. AOL’s users were not called customers or subscribers; they were members. AOL thrived because it helped to create a social network. CompuServe and Prodigy, which began primarily as information and shopping services, did the same with tools such as CompuServe’s CB Simulator, which replicated in text the wacky pleasure of talking on a citizens-band radio.
Kimsey the bar owner could never quite get why healthy people would spend their Saturday nights in chat rooms and on bulletin boards. “Admit it, don’t you think it’s all horseshit?” he would ask Case half jokingly.36 Case would shake his head. He knew that there was a pony in it.
AL GORE AND THE ETERNAL SEPTEMBER
Online services such as AOL developed independently of the Internet. An entanglement of laws, regulations, traditions, and practices made it impossible for commercial companies to offer direct Internet access to ordinary folks who were not co
But begi
It began in earnest when AOL, following the lead of a smaller competitor named Delphi, opened a portal in September 1993 to allow its members access to the newsgroups and bulletin boards of the Internet. In Internet lore, the deluge was called, especially by contemptuous veteran netizens, the Eternal September. The name referred to the fact that every September a new wave of freshmen would enter universities and, from their campus networks, get access to the Internet. Their postings tended to be a
This opening up of the Internet, which paved the way for an astonishing era of i
Gore’s father was also a senator. “I remember driving with my dad from Carthage to Nashville listening to him say how we needed better than these two-lane roads,” the younger Gore recalled. “They won’t handle our needs.”40 Gore Sr. helped craft the bipartisan legislation for the interstate highway program, and his son took that as an inspiration for helping to promote what he dubbed the “Information Superhighway.”
In 1986 Gore launched a congressional study that looked at a variety of topics, including creating supercomputer centers, interco
When I told people I was writing a book about the people who helped invent computers and the Internet, the most predictable quip I got, especially from those who knew little about Internet history, was “Oh, you mean Al Gore?” Then they would laugh. It’s a mark of our political discourse that one of the significant nonpartisan achievements on behalf of American i
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, two of the people who did in fact invent the Internet’s protocols, spoke up on Gore’s behalf. “No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President,” they wrote.42 Even Republican Newt Gingrich defended him, observing, “It’s something Gore had worked on a long time. . . . Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.”43
The takedown of Gore was the harbinger of a new era of rising partisanship accompanied by a lack of faith in what government could do. That’s why it’s useful to reflect on what led to the Eternal September of 1993. Over the course of more than three decades, the federal government, working with private industry and research universities, had designed and built a massive infrastructure project, like the interstate highway system but vastly more complex, and then threw it open to ordinary citizens and commercial enterprises. It was funded primarily by public dollars, but it paid off thousands of times over by seeding a new economy and an era of economic growth.
I. An Ethernet or WiFi today can transmit data at a billion bps, which is more than 3million times faster.
II. Western Union later bought the business and turned it into its Mailgram service.
III. A reference to the phrase used during the 1980 drama in which Americans were held hostage in Iran.
Tim Berners-Lee (1955– ).
Marc Andreessen (1971– ).