Even though we’re very progressive about web design, sometimes we do look back and have to admit that we kind of miss some of those outdated bits of online culture. Here’s a little list for those of you who want to wallow in nostalgia with us:
Gopher – Gopher was one of the old Internet protocols before the WWW. It imposed a much stricter hierarchy on content, which had to be placed in folders and indexed with a text menu. It only lasted from 1991 to 1993. here is a list of still-functioning Gopher servers – amongst others, Firefox has a Gopher protocol. And here is an Ars Technica writeup on what the Gopher-heads are up to now.
BBS Banners – Just about the most amazing cultural Internat art ever, these were character graphic images done in ASCII or ANSI characters, which, when you dialed into a bulletin board system, would gradually scroll up welcoming you with all kinds of surprising artwork. Most of the graphic artists in the BBS community worked for free or little money; many are forgotten forever now. Here’s a whole gallery of rendered BBS art.
“Under Construction” GIFs – There was practically a whole subculture just revolving around animated gifs in the early web days. Believe it or not, you saw these things every day in the mid-’90s web. A whole gallery of Under Construction GIFs.
Old Portable Gadgets – Old digital gizmos were not much better than a programmable calculator with a hyperthyroid problem, but they’re amazing to revisit now. A blog devoted to cataloging these, called It Ain’t Dead Yet, has lots of shots that will jog your memory. Crikey! Is that a Timex Sinclair 1000?
Unix System Manuals – If you went to college in the 1970s and took comp-sci, chances are at some point you found yourself thumbing through stacks of manuals in a room full of noisy PDPs and Vaxes. Relive those days with this collection of original Unix First Edition Man Pages. Complete with a page for ‘b’, the compiler for the B programming language! What, you didn’t think they started with C, did you?
Peter Brittain
Digital Agency