Porn, hate speech, youtube videos of cats.... But, what would we do without you? Happy Birthday 'the internet'!

Happy Birthday internets!!! You're only 17 years old, and already you know so much more than anyone else on earth! Sure, you have your darker side (porn, hate speech, Britney Spears websites, and youtube videos of cats), but then you also have your wonderful aspects (internet banking, email, facebook, youtube videos of people miming Britney Spears songs...) So, on the whole we're proud of you, and we wouldn't know what to do without you!

So, here's wishing the internet a happy birthday, and many happy returns!

To read more about the 'birth' of the internet go here.

Comments

[Steve Hayes]

Seventeen years old?

It's surely older than that. Twenty years ago i went to a conference on Uninet (the South African universities network) at the CSIR, and at my recommendation South Africa connected to the Internet via Fidonet -- all Internet traffic from South Africa to the rest of the world was send between Rhodes University in Grahamstown and Portland, Orgeon over 9600 bps modem on a dial-up line. Randy Bush, who ran the Fidonet-Internet gateway in Oregon visited South Africa for a Fidonet conference, I think in 89. So it's definitely been going for more than 17 years.