You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly. Before we littered it with cat pictures, we had links to family and friends pages. We had our email on it too before the spam wars.
Exactly. Also there was no facebook, twitter, type services. If someone got an account some place to create a website (like say a university professor), that was rather special and they would also use it to host their family's pictures, maybe have a section for his wife's cake decorating hobby and so on.
I think it was even before Facebook, remember how everything was completely public at first (and by first I meant when it was already launched globally, just before it became a hype). I remember being utterly surprised seeing all girls (I know) phone numbers out in the clear. So I guess we were already not naive anymore about the web.
> You wouldn't understand because you didn't experience the web when it was new and friendly.
Yes. Yes I did. I bathed in the firehose when it was just dribbles. I was first online in 1993 when I was still in High School. I remember finding porn on people's personal pages. I remember the nascent scribbbles of some of my favorite tech journalists. I remember looking at my url history file of 3 megs and now I know most of those places are gone. I certainly experienced the web when it was fresh.
However I didn't experience it in an academic or professional setting. I think that's the delta there, er, the change. Maybe you don't know what a delta is ;)
