Musings of a Net Junkie Posted 2024-03-08
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I've just finished reading Surfing on the Internet by J. C. Herz, a travelogue
of the pre-WWW internet. I managed to pick up a copy at my University's annual
book sale. Ever since landing on Gopher I've had an interest in these alternate
application layer protocols and the niche communities that reside on them today.
Having grown up in a time where web and net tend to mean the same thing, it is
hard to grasp a time where this wasn't the case.
It's been fun looking up the various MU*S, newsgroups, listservs and more that
get name dropped in the book, trying to find what's still active. Not much as it
turns out. LamdaMOO is kept online for posterity but feels kinda liminal these
days, Usenet is slow once you filter out the spam, and many of the listserv
e-zines seem to be lost to time. It feels like a lot of the record of this
period may be sitting on degrading hard disks in people's basements. It leaves
me wondering what my future kids will be able to find to get an idea of the
internet from my childhood? So much of it too is slowly disappearing. I'm
grateful for the community here on SDF, and the part it plays in keeping these
corners of the internet alive.
If anyone has any pointers regarding active MU*s, newsgroups, mailing lists,
BBSes etc. please get in touch. This stuff fascinates me to no end.
