Everything in my comment is 100% historically accurate.
Yes, there was a BBS scene, but it was a fading retro thing.
That's besides the point; the blog describes technology that existed in the middle 1980's, and claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's. Nobody had Internet, chat was for two people, one of whom was the sysop and so on. While those systems still existed, they were just retro holdovers from the 80's.
I contracted for a pay-per-click subscription website running on Linux, in 1994. This had customers. I know because I wrote the billing system to charge authenticated users for the mining/prospecting-related info they accessed. This business still exists today in some shape: http://infomine.com In 1994 it employed some half dozen full-time staff to do the research and keep the database updated.
I knew many people who were Internet connected. I communicated via e-mail.
In 1995, Windows 95 came out. It came with a TCP/IP stack: no more bolted-on networking. And, in a follow up release, it bundled Internet Explorer. Those pieces were there for a reason.
> claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's
The blog does not claim this, full stop. The author says "before anyone I knew had an Internet connection", describing a personal experience, presumably during his childhood or teenage years ("I just had it open during the night, so that my parents could use the phone line during the day").
Why attack the author's personal experience and anecdotes?
fwiw, my own experience mirrors the author's exactly. In my area (Philly) there were around two hundred single-line hobbyist boards in the mid 90s, meaning ~1993-1997. It was not a "fading retro thing" quite yet, and as a teenager I didn't personally know any frequent internet users until at least 1996.
For historical context, Yahoo wasn't incorporated until 1995. Internet Explorer v1 was released in mid-1995 and wasn't even initially bundled with Windows 95. Widespread home internet adoption took a couple years, and (at least in my area) dial-up hobbyist BBS's only started to dwindle in the late 90s, while the commercial ones (many-line majorbbs/worldgroup systems) transitioned to become dial-up ISPs.
For another data point, I developed a couple BBS doorgames from 1999-2003. The BBS scene was definitely dying off at that point, but nonetheless I still sold several hundred registrations for my games during that period.
Yes, there was a BBS scene, but it was a fading retro thing.
That's besides the point; the blog describes technology that existed in the middle 1980's, and claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's. Nobody had Internet, chat was for two people, one of whom was the sysop and so on. While those systems still existed, they were just retro holdovers from the 80's.
I contracted for a pay-per-click subscription website running on Linux, in 1994. This had customers. I know because I wrote the billing system to charge authenticated users for the mining/prospecting-related info they accessed. This business still exists today in some shape: http://infomine.com In 1994 it employed some half dozen full-time staff to do the research and keep the database updated.
I knew many people who were Internet connected. I communicated via e-mail.
In 1995, Windows 95 came out. It came with a TCP/IP stack: no more bolted-on networking. And, in a follow up release, it bundled Internet Explorer. Those pieces were there for a reason.
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