The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore - cleberg.net
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2026-06-29
The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore
A thorough retrospective of my time on the internet.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. 2001: The Family Computer
3. 2004: Exploring the Web
4. 2007: Living There
5. 2012: When Everything Started Changing
6. 2026: Logging On Today
7. The Internet I Miss
8. Closing
1. Introduction
The internet; what can I say? It's the driving force behind nearly the whole<br>world today - economies, countries, communities, and more run solely on the<br>internet these days.
However, it wasn't always this way.
Once upon a time, the internet didn't even exist. When it did, the internet was<br>a place . It was a place you went. You selectively chose to visit the internet,<br>based on your own free will.
If you wanted to visit a chat room, or perhaps preview a fancy new Flash game,<br>you visited the internet for a few minutes in the evening before going back to<br>your family or friends.
This has changed dramatically in the last 20-30 years. Today, it's 2026 and<br>woven into nearly every part of daily life for the majority of the Earth's<br>population.
Let's do a quick checklist and see what requires the internet or becomes tedious<br>if we opt not to use the internet (yes, this list is tedious on purpose):
Banking
Paying bills
Taxes
Shopping
Watching TV or movies
Listening to music
Reading the news
Looking up directions
Ordering food
Booking travel
Messaging friends and family
Video calls
Playing most modern video games
Downloading software updates
Activating new devices
Backing up photos
Storing files
Finding a restaurant
Reading reviews
Checking the weather
Looking up a recipe
Researching almost anything
Applying for a job
Remote work
School and homework
Medical records
Scheduling appointments
Government services
Renewing licenses
Filing insurance claims
Managing investments
Home security cameras
Smart home devices
Navigation in your car
Finding a phone number
Dating
Selling used items
Buying event tickets
Boarding a flight
Receiving package updates
Authentication (2FA)
Password management
Identity verification
What a list. How fun. I love being absolutely restricted to a specific<br>technology or method with little to no options.
Joking aside, this post is my personal reflection of the internet, and perhaps<br>tech and life in general, over my lifetime. I was born in the late 1990s, but<br>was also born in a rural area of the USA, so I have been privileged to see<br>technology evolve from the "my stereo is the highest tech equipment in my house"<br>stage to the "I have all of human history in my pocket" stages.
This post is about remembering these moments from my perspective, regardless of<br>whether the evolutions have been good or bad.
As you read on, please (PLEASE! ) send me an email if this post sparks a memory<br>or you have thoughts. I genuinely enjoy hearing these stories from anyone, and I<br>push for you to send them to me as you think of them.
2. 2001: The Family Computer
The family computer. What a throwback. Perhaps you even had a third place<br>computer you visited. Wherever, whatever that computer was - think of that<br>computer as you read this. I will be speaking from my perspective and I hope it<br>resonates with someone out there.
I recall coming home from school, getting through required chores, homework, or<br>anything else first. Perhaps you had siblings with which you shared the computer<br>or the TV.
In my case, we owned an early 2000s Gateway tower PC. A beautiful (read: ugly),<br>beige Gateway computer with the spotted cow on it. It sat on a big "oak" hutch,<br>with integrated file-compatible drawers and specific spots for your matching<br>beige desktop speakers.
Figure 1: Gateway Ad from 1992
To use the computer, you likely turned on a very heavy CRT monitor. Perhaps it<br>even flickered, emitted you a static buzz, or showed a wavy pattern in the<br>graphics. This was the epitome of 2000s technology and people loved it.
Side note : We owned a heavy, wooden CRT TV set from the 1970s or 1980s that hid<br>all buttons behind a fake, black "speaker" that you could press to pop open. A<br>decade or two after we had tossed this TV into our barn for disposal, my brother<br>and I took turns hitting the glass screen as hard as we could with a baseball<br>bat.
It never left a mark, regardless of how hard we hit it. Why don't we produce<br>that quality anymore?
If you wanted to use the computer, you had to press a very heavy, circular<br>button that would emit a memorable CLUNK as you engaged the button within the<br>PC. This would result in an airplane level of whirring while it used maybe a few<br>GB of memory and hard drive storage to boot up Windows 95.
Figure 2: Windows 95 Desktop
At this point, the world was your oyster. You could do so many things that<br>humans throughout history couldn't do:
Open multiple programs at the same time . Scientists were baffled.
Minimize a window, then...