Internet Power Explains the “World Wide Web” in 1995

The early days of the internet lasted a long time. Notably, the start of people getting online differed from childhood, to something teenagers tried out, to people only getting a computer in the home past 2000. It wasn't like the iPhone where people all got it within a compressed timeframe.

Because of that long time, the "wild west" of the internet remained so for nearly a decade. At the time this new technology was beginning to creep into our homes, this time capsule of a video, Internet Power, was created. And thanks to Andy Baio, it has been digitized and uploaded to YouTube for us to all see.

Here's some notable fun stuff:

A minute in has an interview with a Microsoft engineer explaining the basics of getting online. There's no mention of Internet Explorer because, well, Microsoft hadn't invented it yet. Hell, they nearly missed the internet wave altogether.

At the 4:37 mark, you see a webpage for Mosaic, the first ever browser. Funny enough, the narrator flubs his script, saying the browser was "developed in 1933".

Just before we hit 8-minutes, we see a list of "search engines needed to sift through all the information." Yahoo is there, but some oddities I definitely never knew of. Raise your hand if Einet or WWW Worm were your search engines of choice back in the mid-90s.

When you get to 13:20 there is a breakdown of "thousands" of places to shop in an "internet mall"!

Finally, at 17:40 you can see Nintendo's Nintendo Power magazine online. It's pretty cool to see a generally-cautious company embrace the web so early and have a lot of content available for people. It even predates the Internet Archive, with the first entry occurring on 12/22/96!

The video is about a half-hour long and a wonderful look down memory lane.