Fragments of an adolescent web

I have unearthed a few old articles typed during my adolescence, between 1996 and 1998. Unremarkable at the time, they now read, three decades later, as a chronicle of a vanished era.¹

The word “blog” does not exist yet. Wikipedia has yet to come. Google has not been born. AltaVista reigns over searches, while already struggling to keep up with the rapidly growing web.² To meet someone, you had to agree in advance and prepare your route on paper maps. 🗺️

The web is taking off. The CSS specification has just emerged, HTML tables still serve for page layout. Cookies and advertising banners are making their appearance. Pages start embedding music and videos, forcing browsers to support plugins. Netscape Navigator holds 86% of the market, but Windows 95 now bundles Internet Explorer to quickly catch up. In response, Netscape open-sources its browser.

France falls behind. Outside universities, Internet access remains expensive and laborious. Minitel still reigns, offering a phone directory, train tickets, remote shopping. This was not yet possible with the Internet: buying a CD online was a pipe dream. Encryption suffers from inappropriate regulation: the DES algorithm is capped at 40 bits and cracked in a few seconds.

These pages bear the trace of the web’s adolescence. Thirty years have passed. The same battles continue: data selling, advertising, monopolies.