History of the Early Internet Years (1986-1993) Quiz

Answer: "met" and "dr"

The concept of the worldwide discussion group idea was initiated in 1979, and established in 1980. The renaming/reorganizing of these usenet groups in the mid 80s was to try and make the system more orderly and efficient, but it was met with some heated debates between those who were in favor of the hierarchy structuring and those who weren't. "soc." were discussions of a social nature, and "talk." were discussion groups that revolved around topics that usually generated very engaged and opinionated issues such as talk.religion, talk.politics, etc.
"rec." groups stood for recreation, and the groups involved arts and entertainment such as rec.games, rec.music, rec.arts.movies, etc. and "sci." groups were science-related, i.e sci.bio, sci.psychology, sci.astro, sci.research, etc.
"news." groups did just that - discuss news.
And "misc." was a catch-all covering miscellaneous topics like misc.travel, misc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids, etc.
In 1987, John Gilmore and Brian Reid created the alt. hierarchy the largest of all usenet groups, generally having many more specific topics.
In 1995, the big 7 became the big 8, adding a "humanities." hierarchy focused on the fine arts: humanities.history, humanities.classics, humanities.visual-arts, etc.

Answer: 2400-baud modem Virus

The FireWall Virus and The Da Vinci Virus were both fictitious viruses from works of fiction, in this case from the anime and manga series "Ghost in the Shell," and the movie "Johnny Mnemonic" respectively. It was the 2400-baud modem virus hoax in 1988 that spread throughout the minds of worrywarts on the internet, and never infected a single computer, despite the fear that it was supposed to delete your data and corrupt your hard drive.

Not everyone was fooled. Computer scientist Robert Tappan Morris Sr., joked with this warning, "Don't read messages.

Not even this one." Mr. Morris however, did indeed spread a real virus in 1988 called the Internet Worm which infect 10% of the 60,000 computer hosts on the internet at the time.

Answer: Internet Relay Chat

The Internet Relay Chat system utilized specific "channels", each one designated with a # prefix, and each one assigned a specific topic. This instant messaging service provided group discussions as well as private messaging and even file sharing. IRC usage has declined since 2003, losing 60% of its users between then and 2012. Other social media platforms cut into IRC's popularity.

Answer: Chain letter

Dave Rhodes was the false name signed to the infamous "Turn $5 into $50,000" email chain letter. Rhodes was rumored to be a student at Columbia Union College, in Maryland, who used the college's internet account to send his scam email in 1988. Also known as the "Make Money Fast!" email scam letter, it is estimated that "Rhodes" made $400,000 perpetrating his ruse.

Answer: Internet Toaster

INTEROP is an information technology conference, held every year since 1986 in the United States and T, and organized by a British company called Informa PLC. Tech professionals, vendors, and industry experts gather to discuss and display the latest trends, in the Information Technology field. Mr. Romkey dubbed his invention, the Internet Toaster. At first it really could only be turned on or off. There wasn't a way to signal it to "dark toast" or "light toast" but one could conceivably achieve that by how long they kept the toaster on for.

Answer: World Wide Web

In 1987 Robert Cailliau conceived the first hypertext system (prior to the World Wide Web) for CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research and then collaborated with Tim Berners-Lee in developing it. The basic structure employed "hypertext" and started out as a way for physic researchers to have global access to cross-linked materials pertinent to their work, but soon spread to allow regular people beyond the world of specialists to link up with pictures, audio and text.

Answer: "surfing the Net"

In 1992, she was trying to come up with a title for her article about the internet when then was looking at a computer mouse pad from the Apple Library in Cupertino, California that had a picture on it of a surfer riding a tall ocean wave. She titled her article for the University of Minnesota Wilson Library Bulletin, "Surfing the Internet". In 2019, Jean Armour Polly was inducted into the internet Hall of Fame.

Answer: Mosaic

Mosaic, developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina's team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, in Urbana Illinois. The browser was released in 1993, supporting images and graphics directly within web pages, which led to an immense surge in internet traffic- over a thousandfold.

Answer: online discussion digression

Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was an author and attorney who coined the term "Godwin's Law" in 1993, after noting that many Usenet newsgroup online discussions quickly degenerate into hyperbole. In "Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies" he stated that, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." In 2012, "Godwin's law" made its way into the 3rd edition of the "Oxford English Dictionary."

Answer: Uniform Resource Locator

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the unique address used to identify and access a specific webpage, file, or resource on the World Wide Web. Typically, URLs contain a protocol such as "http://" or "https://" and a domain such as .com, .org, .net, etc. and other symbols that indicate the specific pathway within that web site.