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50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974

A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.
by David Cassel via The New Stack on August 24, 2024
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Alt Text

A brief history of the textfile, and the production of conspiracy theories on the internet.
by Walter J. Scheirer via HNN on May 8, 2024
Skyscraper construction workers at lunch photo, but sitting atop a web search bar.

Social Media Is Not What Killed the Web

Better browsers made things worse.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on March 25, 2024
At the New York Public Library, 15 December 2004.

The Birth of Our System for Describing Web Content

Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable.
by Monica Westin via Aeon on February 22, 2024
Image of a woman sitting in front of the computer

The Intimate and Interconnected History of the Internet

A new book offers a picture of an early Internet defined by community, experimentation, and lack of privacy. 
by Kevin Driscoll, Jacob Bruggeman via The Nation on October 14, 2022
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on stage giving a presentation below a screen showing pictures of people connected by the Facebook network.

How Capitalism—Not a Few Bad Actors—Destroyed the Internet

Twenty-five years of neoliberal political economy are to blame for today's regime of surveillance advertising, and only public policy can undo it.
by Matthew Crain via Boston Review on August 3, 2022
Servers at a Facebook data center

Build a Better Internet

An interview with Ben Tarnoff, the author of "Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future."
by Nick Serpe, Ben Tarnoff via Dissent on June 27, 2022

Could Internet Culture Be Different?

Kevin Driscoll’s study of early Internet communities contains a vision for a less hostile and homogenous future of social networking.
by Ethan Zuckerman via New York Review of Books on May 19, 2022
Picture of a computer.

The Internet Is Rotting

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
by Jonathan Zittrain via The Atlantic on June 30, 2021
The cover of Black Software by Charlton D. McIlwain, depicting a raised fist against a green background.

Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories

What has been gained and lost from overlooking histories about the wild heterogeneity of networks that existed for well over a century?
by Lori Emerson via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 12, 2021
A boy surfs on a computer keyboard surrounded by details from earlier internet eras.

You Probably Don’t Remember the Internet

How do we memorialize life online when it’s constantly disappearing?
by Kaitlyn Tiffany via The Atlantic on March 22, 2021
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Trump and Biden Both Want to Repeal Section 230. Would That Wreck the Internet?

Today's heated political arguments over censorship and misinformation online are rooted in a 26-word snippet of a law that created the Internet as we know it.
via Retro Report on November 30, 2020

The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing

It’s 2020 — do you know where your content is?
by Katie Notopoulos via BuzzFeed News on December 28, 2019
Mark Zuckerberg
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How the Internet Lost its Soul

After 50 years of networked communications, commercial interests have eclipsed the public good.
by Janet Abbate via Made By History on November 1, 2019
a blurry image of yahoo.com's home page

Should the National Register of Historic Places Apply to Websites?

Corporate motivation isn’t enough when it comes to digital preservation. Here’s a case for creating a National Register of Historic Places for websites.
by Ernie Smith via Tedium on October 17, 2019
Illustrated figures sit inside a pink triangle embedded with gender markers.

An Oral History of the Early Trans Internet

Trans people have existed since the dawn of time. The internet has not.
by Henry Giardina via Gizmodo on July 9, 2019
The Interface Message Processor that connected UCLA to ARPANET.

Communication Revolution

ARPANET and the development of the internet, 50 years later.
by Zoë Jackson via Perspectives on History on May 14, 2019

A Brief History of Porn on the Internet

Pornographers were in many ways the innovators who fueled the rise of the internet as we know it.
by David Kushner via Wired on April 9, 2019

A Map of the Internet from May 1973

The modern internet has come a long way.
by Jason Kottke via kottke.org on March 28, 2019

Counter-Histories of the Internet

Our ethics and desires can shape digital networks at least as forcefully as those networks influence us.
by Marta Figlerowicz via Public Books on February 25, 2019

“Google Was Not a Normal Place”

A behind-the-scenes account of the most important company on the Internet, from grad-school all-nighters to extraordinary global power.
by Adam Fisher via The Hive on July 10, 2018

The Man Who Created the World Wide Web Has Some Regrets

Tim Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.
by Katrina Brooker via Vanity Fair on July 1, 2018
collage of disappeared webpages

The Internet Isn't Forever

When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.
by Maria Bustillos via Columbia Journalism Review on February 20, 2018

How the FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Breaks With 50 Years of History

The scholar who coined the phrase "net neutrality" explains why the agency's latest move represents such a radical break.
by Tim Wu via Wired on December 6, 2017

Future Historians Probably Won't Understand Our Internet, and That's Okay

Archivists are working to document our chaotic, opaque, algorithmically complex world—and in many cases, they simply can’t.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on December 6, 2017

Commercial Surveillance State

Blame the marketers.
by Matthew Crain, Anthony Nadler via n+1 on September 27, 2017

The Fake-News Fallacy

Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet.
by Adrian Chen via The New Yorker on September 4, 2017

Jump-Rope Songs Were Once a Cornerstone of American Folklore. Now It’s Memes.

The Library of Congress is turning to the internet for a new generation of shared culture.
by Jacob Brogan via Slate on September 4, 2017

The Internet Should Be a Public Good

The Internet was built by public institutions — so why is it controlled by private corporations?
by Ben Tarnoff via Jacobin on August 31, 2016
Pixelated image of ancient ruins with columns

Raiders of the Lost Web

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.
by Adrienne LaFrance via The Atlantic on October 14, 2015
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