If you want to look at fossils , you go to anatural history museum . If you need to look at painting , you go to anart museum . Because even if you ca n’t actually disturb the exhibit , it ’s still squeamish to see the artifact in all their tactile , three - dimensional aura .
But what if you want to wait at artifact that never were 3D — WWW Sir Frederick Handley Page , e-mail , chat way , digital files , and other relics that originally existed online ? The well billet to see things of that like just might be , well , online .
handily enough , there is a “ museum ” for that : Internet Artifacts , make byNeal Agarwaland host on his siteneal.fun . It ’s a timeline that walks you through the history of the internet in notable programme , import , and firsts , starting with an image of ARPANET — a Department of Defense computer web project that predated the internet — as it looked in 1977 .
One salient takeout from Internet Artifacts is that a great deal of internet finish is old than you might suppose . The firstsmiley face emoticondates back to 1982 : reckoner scientist Scott Fahlman suggested it as a way to discover a joke online . He also suggested a frowny human face to denote a serious mail service . ( Both emoticon had hyphens for noses.)Usenet mathematical group , meanwhile , were in full swing by the mid-1980s .
ForMillennials(and anyone older than them ) , the museum also service as a walk down memory lane . tick the “ Sign On ” push on theAOL slideto hear that unmistakable telephone dial - up interference — one of manysounds that today ’s kids would n’t recognize .
you may even watch a now - hilariousclipfrom a 1994 episode of theTODAYshow in which host Katie Couric , Bryant Gumbel , and Elizabeth Vargas are utterly perplex by the @ symbolization and seek to figure out what the internet even is .
Explore Internet artifact for yourselfhere .
