I was taking advantage of the warm weather this weekend to do chores. Among the long list of "honey-do" items was cleaning out our storage shed. I didn't finish it but I ran across some interesting things. Burried in a stack of old computer magazines was a "Map of the Internet". Curious as to what it would contain I opened it up and saw it showed the major areas on Prodigy, CompuServe, America Online, and the MS Network. There were areas for technical support, taxes, and advice on hardware and software. I thought that it was not that different than the current Internet except that now instead of dialing into a particular service we can just go to Google, Yahoo, or Live Search and find the same types of information.

It was also interesting to me that of the sponsors of the map only a few still exist as companies and they are generally not household names. The one exception is America Online which is still around and sending out CDs at certain intervals. Samsung is still around but is not associated with computers as much as consumer electronics. U.S. Robotics is still alive and kicking according to Wikipedia but I haven't heard about them for a long time. Then again I haven't been in the market for a fax modem for a long time either. Okidata appears to be alive and well but I am not sure what they do beyond printers.

Other sponsors who have gone out of business or been bought up are CompuServe, Connectix, NETCOM, and Prodigy.

It was a nice trip down memory lane. I don't think I will see another add that attempts to show cyperspace as a collection of 41 dots that tells me that 1 of those dots could be my home page. It makes you realize how much things have changed in a few short years and how much we are poised to see them change in the future. It's exciting to be part of that change.