To me, the turning point in Internet history is when commercial use became allowed. Around 1989, I remember that I could only send e-mail to Apple employees (@apple.com) if the purpose of the e-mail was consistent with an educational objective and was non-commercial in nature.

That prevented any kind of serious growth. It was great for academics. Then, something happened. Somebody, somewhere, decided that it was ok to use those government-paid lines for business. Who made that decision and when? I don't know, but they deserve a lot of credit as well.

Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992. This created the open Internet as we know it today.

And who was the main guy behind that bill? Yes, Al Gore. http://w2.eff.org/Legislation/Bills_by_name/Old/info_infra_t...

I remember a commercial Usenet service around the mid 80's. Before that you had to have a friend at .com hooked into ARPANet. It wasnt hard to do, but it wasn't open to the average Joe. Unfortunately the fees at the commercial company were too high and it lasted only a year. $5/hour or so were pretty low for the time, but still too high for casual use.

The web has endured all problems. All the challenges. The internet has made our lives easier. We are now connected. The internet is the best thing that has happened to man kind. And people who say we need to replace the internet. GO FLY A KITE. The internet is awesome. Not perfect, But awesome.

Not to be too much of a nit picker: this is the anniversary of the proposal. The real working WWW came in 1991. OTOH TBL and CERN think this is the anniversary, so who am I to say.

My how the time has passed. I remember when the Internet was just crawling around on overcrowded dial-up connections and AOL chat rooms. Now it's all grown up.

I am 21 haha me and the internet could be friends yeayy, ohh wait we are friends!

Internet.

Serious business.