The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

I remember the glory days of UNIX/Usenet/etc. in the 80s at college too. I had an email address at Compuserve in the mid-80s, though I mainly used it for talking to other Compuserve members (when we weren't using 'CB channels', for those that remember). I remember all the various things like Usenet before the 'Internet' too; I don't recall anybody in my group ever calling it the Internet until after the WWW came along.

> I don't recall anybody in my group ever calling it the Internet until after the WWW came along.

Really? I do. I spent the early years of the web trying to get all the new people who had suddenly joined the net to understand that the web and the internet were two very different things. I gave up after a while.

Everybody was 'new' to the web. I've noticed the same confusion, and finally gave up trying to explain. Today, it seems people say 'Internet' for everything and 'web' has become passe.

Typically when people were using Usenet and email, they weren't on the Internet proper but rather connecting to a node (often via a terminal emulator over dialup) that often itself got batch updates via dialup using UUCP etc. Even when people started using their dialup services (AOL, Compuserve etc) as web gateways they often weren't technically on the Internet but rather just the WWW subset of it. When people started dialing in to ISPs and getting cable/DSL modems then they were on the Internet as they technically had access to all of its facilities and could connect to any other node on it. So there was a legitimate reason for not calling most of the earlier commercial/hobbyist services the Internet as they were just giving you glimpses at parts of it often without technically being on it.