#ValleyOfTheBoom & a Historical Look at the Internet in 2019

I watched the first episode of the Valley of the Boom on the National Geographic channel and it was a little like a walk down memory lane. Fascinating to see where the internet has come over the years. I first started playing with the internet in High School prior to the world wide web. Back that it was dial up modems and bulletin boards. I remember writing papers on the Vietnam War that came completely from digital sources back in 1989. I would be surprised if even one other person in my High School was doing that at that time. Modems weren't a common household item back then and bulletin board systems were fairly limited, but I found the whole thing fascinating.

Then in college I had a roommate that was a college science major who was working on a web page for a class and doing a little HTML. I had taught myself coding as far back as the 6th grade and asked him to show me what he was doing. HTML was easy, so I picked it up quickly. In 1995, as I recall, the the Netscape browser was on version 1.1. It was still fairly new. Had what I called the "breathing N" which told you it was trying to load the page. It was very limited. No style sheets or even HTML tables at that time. That came out shortly after however. I started building websites professionally around that time. My first client was a company that sold long distance calling cards (lol talking about Netscape and calling cards is making me feel old right now).

Around that same time I wrote a paper for a business communications class on the number of users on the internet. It was the first publication that I know of that looked at the research of a number of different surveys to get at a true number. I believe the numer was right around 30 million users. I put that paper on the internet and the University of Michigan contacted me and asked if they could re-publish my paper for some work they were doing. Not that long ago the internet was a relatively small place. 30 million users compared to about 4.02 billion users today is very different.

Watching Valley of the Boom got my creative juices going. It was a day of the wild west of the internet. Even before the gold rush. It was a lot of fun.

The internet of today is still fun. But different. When compared to television, we are still in the black and white TV days, but it is the larger screen b&w TVs with clearer pictures. We are getting close to color TV, but nowhere near HDTV yet. That will come quickly however. If your business isn't prepared you'll be in the same place Netscape, long distance calling cards and the rest are today. Give us a call and get a free consultation on how to revolutionize your business.