| FWIW, Claude followed a similar trail and honed in on Spring 1992: Three internal anchors line up tightly on 1992: - EFF's age. Barlow writes that EFF, "after almost two years of operation," now thinks of itself as building "the united Mind of Humanity." EFF was founded July 10, 1990, so "almost two years" puts the writing at roughly spring/early summer 1992. - "Last summer's coup in the Soviet Union." The August 1991 Moscow coup. Read naturally, "last summer" was written sometime between fall 1991 and the end of summer 1992. - Internet size. Barlow says the Internet "connects some 800,000 (mostly UNIX) computers." Per RFC 1296, the host count was 727,000 in January 1992 and reached ~992,000 by July 1992. 800,000 sits squarely in spring 1992. He also doesn't mention Mosaic, which launched in January 1993 — by 1993 it was almost a reflex in Barlow's writing — which is weak supporting evidence that this predates that release. https://pastebin.com/LFdWS2SQ |