This week marks 25 years of the internet’s existence. Even now, a lot of people don’t really know how to use it. Some people use Twitter to troll, others bid for ridiculous things on eBay that they never actually want to buy, we’ll ignore loved ones on social media sites because we’re too busy tweeting people we’ve never met and we all know someone who's drunkenly typed the name of someone they fancy into the status box of their Facebook, thinking it was the search box.
But imagine the rookie mistakes people were making in the nascence of what no one but your dad calls the World Wide Web? Luckily for people back then, who were struggling to navigate Encarta and perhaps spent their free time ironing their chinos, tutorial adverts were created to help people work out how to use the internet.
And luckily for us, today, we can watch these videos and marvel at a) how much slap bass there was in the ’90s b) how incredibly ’90s the ’90s were c) the utter ubiquity of chinos (did we mention this before?) and d) just how little people really knew about the internet.
1981
Though the internet has been credited with the downfall of newspapers, it was actually newspapers that invested in the earlier forms of the web. They would send text-only versions of the newspapers. The newsreader closes by saying that ‘with an hourly use charge of $5 an hour, the new telepaper won’t be much competition for the 20 cent street edition.’ How little they knew…
1994
This tutorial explains how you can get your dad the present of the internet for Father’s Day. Taking you through the boring logistics of modems and the like, we enjoyed this one for showing the Wired magazine worker to be an absolute hyper-nerd and the slap-bass in the soundtrack.
1994
Just as you used to hear a little chuckle from David Dimbleby when he told viewers to ‘tweet in’ their thoughts, even people working in the media were a bit unsure of what the internet had in store.
1995
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America Online, or AOL as you’ll know it, did an advert all about how the internet can help you out with ‘time-saving services’. Offering 10 free online hours and free software to get online, AOL were pretty keen on hooking people in before lugging them with hefty dial-up connection fees. Remember when it cost 2p a minute to connect to the web?
2005
Connie the AOL lady in her fancy sheer internet dress told us exactly how FREE the internet was. Well, for the trial period at least.
And, just, while we’re delving into the digital annals of digital history, remember when we used to be patient enough to wait a full 28 seconds to get connected, just because we got to listen to this ditty?
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.