Monday, October 12, 2009

Revisiting the History of the Internet In Realtime through Usenet Archives

Ever wanted to see how the Web evolved or are you nostalgic about Usenet ? i am ! More so because, when i found them i had very little to contribute and the older geeks were not polite, not at all! A single stupid statement would lead to flaming that could demotivate you for weeks.

But i loved it still, it was geek culture where you couldn't survive without knowledge, intellect and an ardent love for learning. It was here that the future map of the Web was laid but ironically as the Web evolved, its popularity decreased and after Google bought off two Usenet archive, it gave way to Google Groups  . The next generation of users hardly knew of their existence. Google never indexed the largest and most valuable user-generated content but now it says it is fixing a bug that would make it more searchable.


This is good news indeed but what excited me to come up with this post is the 20 Year Usenet Timeline that Google has put up. If you want to relive old times or are an enthusiast who would like to travel back in time to witness evolution of the Internet, to read Linus Trovald's post on his project, which led to the Linux revolution or Tim-Berners Lee's  announcement of the Web or the first mention of the term "search engine" check out the page.

No comments: