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I had a routine. I would go online and start or continue a big download using some downloader tool. I don't recall when continuing a download over ftp and http became a thing, but it was a big improvement when your connection dropped out once an hour and you couldn't download more than a few megabytes in that time. The download could be a game or a new netscape or mcafee version (mcafee had a backdoor on their ftp that let me download the full version). I also remember downloading 3ds max 1.0 some time in 1996 or 1997, all 100 mb of it, at 5 kb per second. Then while the download was running i would surf the web, with images disabled ofcourse. Start from yahoo's directory and follow new links, which led to more links, which led to more links. I didn't really visit the same sites all that often, it was the newness that interested. Surfing wasn't visiting the same 5 sites in a round robin pattern, it was like tracing a path through wikipedia, but without wikipedia. There were a lot more webpages with wikipedia-like content, or so it seems in retrospect. The first site i recall visiting on a daily basis was slashdot, to which i immediately developed an addiction. But that was 1997, not 1996. I also started university in 1997, and would hang out in the computer class to surf at megabit speeds, which felt like what happened when picard said 'engage'. Ofcourse, webpages were measured in kilobytes, not megabytes, so at the network speeds of the university I was typically gated by the speed of the web server on the other end. I frequented usenet a lot, but just to read, not to post. Irc didn't interest me. I only started chatting when icq showed up, which led to my first online friend, a very kind south african girl, who I ended up visiting in the late 90's. I have a hard time imagining that scenario on the modern web. I miss the old internet, but I would miss the new internet as well. If only we could have both. |