To date, I don't think we've ever seen something on the internet as destructive to the cultural industries as Napster was in 1999 (although AI is threatening that now!). By coincidence, 1999 was when David Bowie became the first major artist to sell an album online as a digital download. The two storylines — Napster and Bowie's Hours — became entwined in intriguing ways. https://cybercultural.com/p/napster-1999/ #InternetHistory #Napster #Bowie
internethistory
"The first two-network TCP/IP transmission was between the [Packet Radio Van] and ARPANET on August 27, 1976; the van was parked next to Rossotti's (since 1956, officially the "Alpine Inn"), a well-known Portola Valley, California biker bar, and wires were run to one of the picnic tables."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_Radio_Van
#internet #InternetHistory #InternetAge #PacketRadioVan #arpanet #history #OnThisDay #OTD
Edited 139d ago
By 1999, Microsoft had vanquished Netscape in the browser war, Google was starting to show up competing search engines, and Napster and Blogger had arrived to shake up our culture. https://cybercultural.com/p/internet-1999/ #InternetHistory
Author's note: if you read and enjoy my article, don't just 'like' it — please boost or share it on the web another way. Indie bloggers can no longer rely on Google or other big tech companies for attention, so human curation is what it's all about (again). 🙏
In the final part of my 5-part series on the history of blogging and RSS, we come to 2003: when RSS Readers like NetNewsWire and Bloglines burst onto the scene, and when I made my official entrance into the blogosphere with a Radio Userland blog called Read/WriteWeb. Also: Google buys Blogger, WordPress debuts, and 16-year old Aaron Swartz live-blogs a Dave Winer keynote. https://cybercultural.com/p/blogosphere-2003/ #InternetHistory #BloggingHistory
This week on Cybercultural, we enter the year 2000. It started with a bang, with the AOL-Time Warner merger in January. But by March, a slow deflation of the dot-com bubble had begun (Fast Company magazine had an ill-timed cover that month: "Built to Flip: Forget 'great companies', get rich quick!" — photo in the post). Meanwhile, later in 2000 the Web's golden boy Marc Andreessen returned with a new startup. https://cybercultural.com/p/dotcom-crash-2000/ #InternetHistory #dotcombubble
Alright, buckle up internet history fans: we've come to the RSS Format Wars! The year 2000 was when RSS got forked into 2 different protocols: Dave Winer's RSS 0.92 and the RDF-based RSS 1.0. What's remarkable, looking back, is that the top bloggers of the day — Kottke, CamWorld, Rebecca Blood, Brad Graham, and others — still weren't using RSS by the end of that year. But they *were* building blogrolls. https://cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-2000/ #InternetHistory #RSS
"The internet emoticon truly traces its lineage directly to Fahlman, who says he came up with the idea after reading "lengthy diatribes" from people on the message board who failed to get the joke or the sarcasm in a particular post -- which is probably what "given current trends" refers to in his own, now-famous missive."
https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0919fahlman-proposes-emoticons/
Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250223224043/https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0919fahlman-proposes-emoticons/
#OnThisDay #OTD #internet #history #InternetHistory #emoticons #emoji #smiley
Edited 116d ago
Remember "social software"? By 2003, the internet had weathered the worst of the dot-com crash and developers and entrepreneurs were beginning to come out of hibernation. While it would take another year for Silicon Valley to start inflating another bubble — this one would be named "Web 2.0" — there was a renewed sense of optimism. https://cybercultural.com/p/internet-2003/ #InternetHistory
This week on Cybercultural, let's re-live the Year of Napster: Shawn Fanning wearing a Metallica shirt to the 2000 MTV Awards, Lars Ulrich testifying to Senate and whining to the media (but in retrospect, was he right after all?!), Judge Patel calling Napster a monster, the media dreaming of a "heavenly jukebox", and — amid it all — a new legal alternative quietly emerges: SoundJam (soon to be known as iTunes). https://cybercultural.com/p/napster-itunes-2000/ #InternetHistory #Napster #iTunes
The final post of Cybercultural season 4 -> Online music and blogging were two key trends in the first decade of digital culture. In 2003, they combine in the form of MP3 blogs. Together with Pitchfork, they revolutionize music journalism. https://cybercultural.com/p/mp3-blogs-2003/ #InternetHistory #MP3Blogs
Let's take a trip back to the year 2000, 25 long internet years ago. A year in which Flash websites proliferate, blogging expands, social news sites like Slashdot gain influence — all of this while the dot-com bubble slowly deflates and Napster dominates headlines. https://cybercultural.com/p/internet-2000/ #InternetHistory
(special thanks to @GroupNebula563 & @Steve for suggesting Homestar Runner, the perfect Flash website suggestion for that year!)
This week on Cybercultural, I look back on Steve Jobs' January 2001 keynote at Macworld SF, when he announced iTunes and Apple's new "digital hub" concept. This was pre-iPod and of course pre-iPhone. The new strategy set the company up for a renaissance in the 21st century, when *everything* became digital. https://cybercultural.com/p/itunes-launch-2001/ #InternetHistory #ClassicApple
Today, October 21, 2025, there is a rally in San Francisco in support of @internetarchive. Tomorrow, the Internet Archive is having a party to celebrate 1 trillion webpages archived. To show my appreciation for their most famous creation, the Wayback Machine, this week's Cybercultural post takes you back 24 years to its launch. Thank-you @brewsterkahle and long live the Internet Archive! https://cybercultural.com/p/wayback-machine-launch-2001/ #InternetHistory
Continuing my history of blogging and RSS series, I look at 2001: the year of warblogs, Movable Type and Blogdex. I see '01 as a transition year for blogging, in which it shifts from personal journaling to a more journalistic approach (although many personal bloggers resented the influx of warbloggers). There are lots of great 2001 screenshots in this post, so I hope you enjoy it. https://cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-2001/ #InternetHistory #Blogging
"Nettime has been widely recognized for its seminal role stimulating and disseminating ideas about Netzkritik or Net Critique, net.art, and tactical media and pioneered practices such as "collaborative filtering"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettime
The internet mailing list Nettime was created in 1995, 30 years ago.
https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9510/msg00000.html
#internet #TheWeb #history #InternetHistory #OTD #OnThisDay #MailingList #NetArt #nettime
"Geocities [which launched in November 1994] has a fascinating history. A roaring beginning, a dramatic climax, the most tragic of endings, and just a sprinkle of hope right at the end."