Status of the Internet pre-1997?

[kato13]

Jason Weiser 10-26-2005, 03:52 PM Ok, this is a good question, in 1995, I remember having a school internet account and I am sure many did, more so by 1996. So by 1997, while it isn't anything like now, there was a lot of growth in things internet. So what effect do you think this had on:


1) The Twilight war before it went nuclear?

2) The breakdown of civil order in the United States ("aka, spreading rumors and panic")

3) Was the WARPAC involved in cyber-warfare against civilian internet nodes as well as the more obvious NIPRNET site?

4) Finally, with what we see in Iraq now, would we have had blogs coming out of Europe and the like, remember, Laptops aren't all that common and Windows 98 is a year off, or does Bill Gates rush it into production due to the government contracts he smells down the pike?

********************

kato13 10-26-2005, 05:06 PM I think the internet's development would have been slowed. The canon discusses a global recession and i beleive if the cold war was still on DARPA would have held parts much closer.


In my opinion development would be slowed to about 1994-5 levels. At that point the web portion of the internet was pretty much nerds (myself included) trading porn and discussing star trek and D&D.



Edit:fixed typo

********************

firewalker 11-03-2005, 05:21 PM kato13, i don't think i have ever seen such a precise and acuret discripton of the internet.

********************

Chuck Mandus 11-26-2005, 09:27 PM Also back then, most PC's ran Windows 3.1 over a DOS 5.x or 6.x shell with Windows 95 coming out in 1995. Processor technology, you'd have 486DX, Pentium and when1997rolls around, a Pentium II (what I'm using now) would be state of the art before the bombs fall. Assuming of course, PC history wouldbe the same as today or nearly so until the nukes fall, I can't see why it would not.


I think if there was no Twilight war and the USSR was still around, the internet would be much the same although you might be missing a lot of sites hosted in Russia (USSR) and Eastern Europe that we have now and the internet mail order bride industry would be more focused on Asia and Central/South America. I wonder how political blogs would be in such a world, would someone like a Michael Moore or Move On get traction in a world with the Soviets still around and a threat?


Getting back to canon, your basic PC in a Twilight world would be a 486DX, Pentium or Pentium II, HD space from 500 megs to 6.0 gigs, Standard VGA graphics to perhaps a graphics card with 4 megs of RAM, CD-ROM only, Processor speeds from 50 MHz topping to 266 or 300 MHz, and a 3.5" floppy drive, some with 5.25" floppy drives too. CD burners not too common then for the average person so backups would be most likely 8mm tapes with 4mm coming online. No MP3's, I don't remember them being around then so multimedia would be around but really stunted.


In 1996, I do rmemeber surfing the web via a free prot from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh using a 1992 Dell 486SX and a 2400 baud modem (later 9600/28800 baud) in text mode only. So back then, you might have had a number of text only users although they could have started to fade away by the time the nukes fell in 1997.


Browsers, you had Netscape 2.x and 3.x IIRC then and Internet Explorer 2.0 was just getting off the ground so graphical browser tech would stll have been Netscape/Mozilla dominated.

********************

kato13 11-26-2005, 09:52 PM The "peace dividend' is attributed to have provided much of the impetus for the roaring economy of the 90's. This led to alot of private investment in information technology during that time. Canon suggests a much slower economy.


I still feel the Internet's development would have been slowed to the point that it would be a virtual non entity in the TW2k world.

********************