I first started using the world wide web in April 1994. Back then there were less than 3,000 web sites to choose from. By July 1998 there were over 4,000,000. My own home page went on-line in October of 1995, which was one of about 20 million pages. By July 1998 there were over 300 million pages. The following are some email messages between me and my father and my friend Alex Ciurczak. It is amazing how much has changed since this time. And, if I may applaud myself, my predictions were correct.
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:23:18 -0400
From: "RSARHH@ROHVM1"
Subject: download
To: dah3@cornell.edu (David Alan Hanauer)
Comment: ROHVM1 RSARHH 04/15/94 18:23:29 SMTP
*** Reply to note of 04/15/94 15:01
Subject: download
Try to get (using veronica): NCSAMosaic 1.0.3. It looks interesting. I was
told you can view a big GIF file without transfering it to your hard drive
(directly from Internet). See what it is. This weekend is the Trenton
Computer Festival. Dad
To: Dad
From: dah3@cornell.edu (David Hanauer)
Subject: from info about the WWW...
"The principal difference between the three systems, it turns out, is deployment. WWW does not have as large a user base as gopher, mainly because of the small number of WWW browsers that are out. This is changing as WWW reaches critical mass (usage of the server at CERN doubles every 4 months -- twice the rate of Internet expansion)."
On Sat, 16 Apr 1994, David Hanauer wrote:
Alex,
If you do not have Mosaic, then get it. I can give it to you. Out of
every Internet application I have ever seen, this is by FAR the MOST
INCREDIBLE I have ever seen. It is going to be the future of the internet
I would guess. It is absolutely amazing. I am going to put it on a disk
and try it out at one of the computer labs maybe tomorrow. Trust me. You
want this. You will be amazed.
Call me.
Dave.
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 01:08:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Walter Ciurczak
Subject: Re: NCSA Mosaic!
To: David Hanauer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Yo loser. I've had mosaic for about six months. I was not that impressed. It looks really cool and colorful and all, but in terms of actually finding something that you're looking for it isn't that effective or efficient... I do think it will be the future of the internet, but only because from now on most of the poeple coming on the internet will be morons. hee hee.
bye.....
To: Alex.Ciurczak
From: dah3@cornell.edu (David Hanauer)
Subject: dork
Alex,
From what I hear from my dad, he went to a computer show yesterday, maybe in Trenton or something, and he said that the big talk about the internet dealt with the WWW and mosaic.
Its cool. Granted, you can't get everything that way, but as it grows it will get better. I mean, if you go to the cornell theory center, there is cool stuff to see. Especially with all of the graphics and stuff. I like pictures, so it makes me happy. And its cool because a list of qucktime movies will come up and it shows a picture from the movie and you just click on the picture and it downloads it, and it would normally run it too (through simple player, automatically), except that we don't have enough memory.
I suggest you take a look at it again. It may not have too much stuff now, but you have to admit that for a protocol it kicks the pants off of gopher. Especially because of the way files are linked. That is the cool part. Don't you agree?
I think I am going to get a new hard drive. I just got an APS catalog, and I totally need a new one (external).
Have a nice day.
Dave.
To: Alex.Ciurczak
From: dah3@cornell.edu (David Hanauer)
Subject: mosaic
you're crazy if you don't like it. I think I am addicted to it. I have been playing with it for way to many hours, and I have barely scratched the surface. This is actually fun to play with, as opposed to fetch and stuff which is simply a tool. It is so completely excellent. The fact that it is so visual makes me very happy because I am not too keen on plain old ASCII. And besides, another cool thing is that anytime you get somewhere you like, you can add it to a 'hotlist'. So, for example, since I like to check the ithaca weather every morning, I just add the weather forecast in the cuinfo gopher (b/c it encompasses gopher, ftp, etc., which you probably know already), and now I just run mosaic and call up the page on weather without having to go through the other directories. Granted, it probably is still faster to do it the old way, but I really like this program a lot. I have to get all of the approproiate apps and stick it on a disk so I can run the complete system on one of the computer lab computers. We'll both try it next week. I will work on getting all of the software on disk and then next week sometime we'll go to a lab and give it a real good test drive. If you don't like it then, I will know for sure that you're insane. I'm telling you, I think this is going to be the next big thing. Why _wouldn't_ anyone want to use this system (besides speed, which is only temporarily a problem)? It is excellent.
Well, I think I am going to order a hard drive tomorrow. External 160 meg or so. It will cost me, but I really need one bad.
Dave.