[zzzeek]

> Many of the internets early adopters were actual criminals

the early adopters were college students and professors since that's where it was available. as far as "criminals" it would have only been those pesky "hackers" who were mostly acting from curiosity. there wasnt any big opportunity for financial fraud on the "internet" because there was no commerce on the internet. the commercialization had to happen first and that required massive buy-in long before criminals could have any fertile ground to operate upon.

> and its detractors talked about how it "couldn't scale",

ive never seen such a thing, in the early 90s most of us didnt even have terms like that queued up

> was bad for the environment,

never heard of this