Tue 18 Oct 2005
OLD, in Internet Years
Posted by Liza under Web/Tech
Boing-Boing includes a link the 100 oldest still-registered domains in the .com domain. The list is interesting, but reading it made me feel visionary old in Internet years.
I first got online in the fall of 1987. I don’t remember exactly when, but October is probably a safe guess. Reno told me about it and showed me how to use e-mail, then our friend
Justin helped me figure out how to email Brian at MIT and Todd at Stanford.
One of my favorite things about email was that back then, each location that the message passed through sent a little message back saying (essentially) "Your message just passed through the University of Texas," or "Your message just passed through PARC/Xerox."
It took a message about 2 minutes and 6 or 10 nodes to reach MIT, and a little less to get from Reed to Stanford. The line of text would interrupt whatever else I was doing — really, whoever else I was emailing — on the amber screen of the VAX terminal until it arrived.
(The fact that I found that so interesting may explain the three Maps of the Internet posters in my cubicle. I am a nerd.)
And all that started before at least 6 of the 100 oldest still-registered .coms. Maybe 7 — one registered in late October.





October 19th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
wow, i actually feel YOUNG about something for once! i didn’t use the internet or email regularly until 1998, when i moved to dc. i had tried to go online a few times in the mid-90s but every page took soooooo long to load up that i gave up almost immediately.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
If you’re old, what does that make me?!
October 20th, 2005 at 3:41 pm
That’s a great question. How old ARE you these days?
BTW, Jen, I think the fact that I started with text only apps and a text only browser probably made it easier. Does anyone else remember LYNX? Or when Yahoo was a series of directories on a Stanford computer?
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Well, this is 2005, so I think I’m 13. Or is that 43? Ah hell, I can’t remember. My socks say I’m 30, but that can’t be right, can it?
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:26 am
The socks that say you’re 30!!! I remember those. I do think it’s a safe bet that you’re between 13 and 43, but not 30.
October 23rd, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Fortunately, the link between Stanford and MIT was faster than that. We could even do real-time chat. Unlike today’s instant messaging, the letters appeared as we typed, so you could be judged by your typing speed and you didn’t have a chance to make corrections before hitting the Send button.