2024-12-09 18:34:15 +00:00
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---
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tags: [world-wide-web, computer-history, internet, bulletin-boards]
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created: Monday, November 04, 2024
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---
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# 241fe1a3_the_Web_versus_modem_BBSs
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As access to the Web and the demand for public access grew, services like AOL,
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which provided dial-up access to a subset of the broader Internet (along with
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email and chat-rooms) became increasingly redundant.
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In response to this, they pivoted in their marketing to presenting their service
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as a safe, curated means of accessing the information: the Web was confusing, it
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was hard to know what was out there and how to find useful information.
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By using AOL, you would know which sites to visit for different tasks and which
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of these were reputable. They adopted a kind of friendly gatekeeper persona in
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the era of unhampered and universal access to information that the Web heralded
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and embodied.
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(This isn't so strange if we consider that outside of work (and the communities
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of computer enthusiasts), personal computers were still relatively new and
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computers themselves still rather forbidding entities.)
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This function of a gateway to the overwhelming content of the web would be taken
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2025-12-03 18:04:51 +00:00
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up first by browsers ([Mosaic's](./Mosaic_Netscape_and_Browser_Wars.md) landing
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page would list websites for specific sources of information and user tasks and
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links to other directories) and then of course search engines which would allow
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users to search for what they needed against an index (usually a subset) of the
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Web's total content. (Interestingly in this regard, AOL would eventually buy
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2024-12-09 18:34:15 +00:00
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Netscape.)
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AOL et al made sense when users wanted access to the internet and the web didn't
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yet exist. Different networks had different access criteria and were often
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poorly signposted, accessible only to those in the know. Private commercial
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networks were set up to service typical consumer needs (news, banking, weather
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reports etc) but the whole point of the Web as conceived by TBL was to make
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everything available to anyone who wanted it through a streamlined and universal
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set of protocols.
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