IE3 came bundled with "Microsoft Internet Mail and News" later "Outlook Express" with full NNTP support.

Not sure what version they're talking about on this page[0] but it's dated 1994.Netscape had NNTP support as far back as then apparently...

[0] http://home.mcom.com/home/guided_tour/news.html

'94 is mid-web ignition, imho.

The point is, the web ate all the other info-sharing protocols, except for mail (which does look worse than ever, but still works) .. and as a result its near-impossible for a new user to easily share their content from their own computer to the rest of the world ..

> The point is, the web ate all the other info-sharing protocols

I wouldn't say that really happened until after sometime in 2015.

> except for mail

My greatest hope for an open social network that people actually use and truly threatens Facebook & friends still rests on something built on top of email. A social-client that uses the email system as its transport layer, basically. It even already has calendaring for events! Heh.

>IE3

Yeah, exactly. By that time, the web hype knob was already at max level.

Disagree. The Internet was still mostly a curiosity when IE3 was around, but people were becoming aware of it. I'd say things really took off in the IE5 timeframe.

Pretty much every installation of Windows in the mid '90s and onward had Outlook Express installed and it was definitely capable of interacting with usenet.

> If they'd included an NNTP reader, we'd be still using USENET to this day.

How does this square with Eternal September being caused by (paraphrasing) "too many normal users with access"? AOL giving its customers NNTP access is frequently cited as one of its downfalls.

They (Netscape and Microsoft) did...eventually ISP's started not providing news servers, though.

No, that would have hastened USENETs demise. The whole eternal September problem stems from small villages turning into big cities.

I don't necessarily agree on why, but I do agree that Eternal September had major repercussions for how technology proceeded, and especially how marketing people managed to spread their insanity into the OS stack, as it were.

The problem with Eternal September was, that we suddenly had a major influx of people who thought they knew how to use the Internet, suddenly on the Internet.

They didn't, really, know how to use the Internet.. no, sir!

AOL had its guardians and angels, COMPUSERVE had its governors, and so on - so when this all hit the near-total benevolent sovereign dictator anarachists that were holding the Internet together, it was, literally, a Cultural War.

Eternal September was fucked; suddenly there were shit-posts everywhere, and oh so much entitlement from the 'paying consumers' who were suddenly interested in alt.binaries.* Someone decided that Internet services should be deprecated/ignored - and decided not to build true "Internet OS"'es, but rather "Internet Applications" .. and appstores .. and so on.

Now, it is my strongly held belief, as someone who weathered that fateful day and ever since with a sense of absolute wonder at the stupidity of humankind .. if the brainfucked horde that made up Eternal September didn't have the experience of suddenly getting "on the Internet" from some shiny CD from some TLA with its own custom browser, but rather - the OS was set up to better guide behaviour over the stack from the outset - my belief is that we would still have NNTP, and possibly more of these kinds of services.

Instead of the behemoth (and now totally out of control) web monstrosity.

I mean, at some point, if we step back and see what really makes the Internet, its that there are more ports than just :80, and anyone can make one to another. You just have to have the right bits.

The problem is, our borked OS'es aren't making it sufficiently easy for the Internet to work - for the user - without requiring a long list of third parties.

So, I also think: someone has an opportunity to change everything by making an OS stack which, out of the box, contains a user-publishable/accessible Global Filesystem, which makes the Web seem like UUCP over a soggynoodlenet...

With regards to Eternal September, you're exactly right. Prior to that AOL invasion you had relatively small bursts of new people joining with no predetermined cultural expectations who had to assimilate into an existing culture. When AOL hit usenet you had a massive number of people with their own established cultural expectations due to the walled and managed AOL garden colliding with the existing Internet culture, and the Internet culture was overwhelmed.

Prior to Eternal September the primary conception of the Internet by those on it was that it was a tool. After Eternal September the primary conception was that it was a channel for consumption and entertainment.