Comments on: 10 Years Ago Today… (Thinking About Technological Progress)

By: year ago today - StartTags.com

year ago today - StartTags.com — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:52:48 +0000

[...] popular, relatively … Today is the one year anniversary of this particular soccer blog. …10 Years Ago Today… (Thinking About Technological Progress …I thought to myself, what sort of technology did I have at my disposal exactly 10 years ago today, [...]

By: What an Amazing Decade (of Technological Progress)! — Technology Liberation Front

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:31:24 +0000

[...] I tried to document the incredible technological changes in my own life over the past decade in this essay I penned on Super Bowl Sunday last February: “10 Years Ago Today… (Thinking About Technological Progress).” [...]

By: john191

john191 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:28:59 +0000

Being a new blogger, I would like to tell you that you have given me much knowledge about it. Thanks for everything.
regards
sears parts

By: yardley285022

yardley285022 — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:59:42 +0000

(The post titled references the fact that Italy is notorious for pickpockets and petty thievery and such. Mom said that both times they were there, guys www.providian.com would stand in or near the doors of banks while you got money or whatever, and weren’t even remotely subtle. Like they’d make eye contact and everything. Lovely.)

By: yardley285022

yardley285022 — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:59:42 +0000

By: Our Dynamic Internet Marketplace | The Technology Liberation Front

Our Dynamic Internet Marketplace | The Technology Liberation Front — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:54:46 +0000

[...] In other words, it’s a dynamic marketplace with a lot of churn and creative destruction. Sure, some big dogs from the late 90s remain (Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, and CNet). But they have all been humbled to some extent. Moreover, lots and lots of other players were driven from the top ranks or disappeared altogether. (GeoCities, Lycos, Excite, AltaVista, Xoom, Snap). And there have been new technologies, platforms, and players that have come out of nowhere in a very short time to become the household names of 2009 (Google, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia). But, as McCracken points out, it’s anyone’s guess which of today’s top Web properties will still be booming in 2019. Anyway, I encourage you to check out McCracken’s very interesting essay, and if you find this sort of restrospective piece interesting, you might also want to check out my essay from earlier this year, “10 Years Ago Today… Thinking About Technological Progress“. [...]

By: Just How Far the Internet Has Come Since 1996 | The Technology Liberation Front

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:24:27 +0000

[...] do you remember those days? I sure do. I penned a piece last month about the amazing technological progress we have witnessed over the past [...]

By: AlexHarris

AlexHarris — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:50:33 +0000

Adam, I think the reason you didn't have an iPod in 1999 may be that they didn't come out until 2001:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

And, even five years ago, they weren't so universally liked, even among technophiles:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/05/28/

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:29:24 +0000

AOL for $20/mo was a deal because the modem farm made it a local call to get on the Internet. Some of the message boards weren't too bad either.

By: SDC

SDC — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:12:34 +0000

Yeah, thank God we can watch 'Tool Academy' on bigger TVs now.

By: Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:21:38 +0000

I have defended the old AOL business model here in the past since it was very useful for many newcomers to the Net back in the late 90s. It provided a safe, guided-tour approach to Net surfing. It was the shopping mall model applied to cyberspace.

But that also explains why it was a walled garden. You weren't "trapped" inside--there was always a back door to get back into the Wild West of the Internet--but when you were on AOL back then, it was a very closed, guarded environment. Again, that had real benefits for some folks--especially the very young and very old. As everyone became more accustomed to how the Internet worked, however, and as they grew more comfortable with search engines as their daily launch pad, the old AOL model withered away.

But it's still a bit astonishing to me that so many millions of Americans were once paying $20 bucks a month for it.

By: Rationalitate

Rationalitate — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:18:56 +0000

But at least I wasn’t one of the 20 million or so people paying $20 bucks per month to graze around inside AOL’s walled garden!

How was AOL's service a walled garden?? Sure, they had that all-in-one browser, but you could access the full internet with it. And if you didn't like seeing a pulsating AOL logo as opposed to a pulsating E or N, you could always just fire up a browser.

By: NoNamer

NoNamer — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:16:47 +0000

Interesting article… I would agree with almost all of those, and even your conclusion at the end. I must admit online gaming was not in the distant future 10 years ago; it was alive and well. It just hadn't made it to consoles yet. I was playing Quake II and other games on the internet well over 10 years ago.