I managed to stumble across this famous piece of writing from the formative years of the commercial Internet...
http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration
I remember reading that whilst trying to patch together my degree at university, the same place I learnt about the Internet and how big it was. Of course the Internet of the early 90s fame was far different from the one most people know today. Yet even then the potential of the medium was overwhelming to me a struggling computing student.
The very concept of near instant communication over the entire globle using email was astounding. I remember showing my sister the joys of real time chat to random people in Perth. Of course this was before IM or even the web. This was back when search was via Archie.au and you could finger university servers to see who was logged in then 'talk' to them directly.
Wow, what a flashback. How things have changed. Now almost everything is web based, just like everything is TCP/IP. I guess it's nice to have a little perspective and understand a bit about where things have come from.
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