webzine98 pics by evyeah, that ev.

derek.

matt.

all sorts of famous people were around then...but they weren't famous. I'll do a long entry about this someday....but all the new people online wonder where the "a-list" came from. Well, that is because you are new...ta-da! A lot of talented people started to get together at webzine, Fray Day, and other events...a lot of local SF people but also people like me who drove 200 miles round trip, or Chris...who if my memory serves correct, first visted San Francisco to speak at webzine 98 or 99. How awesome is that?

matter of fact, the willie brown came, and to everyone's surprise, including MC Justin, he read a proclimation affirming "internet independence". Had a certificate and everything. Most of us were just unknown geeks slaving away in various places. My girlfriends parents didn't know what a Web Designer was in 1996--they thought i was nuts.

You see how long ago all that stuff was? Before millions of diary sites, blogger, MT, 5 megapixel digital cameras. Kottke was known for his 0sil8 projects.

Personal content didn't come from nowhere. "Famous" bloggers didn't just appear one day. I get pissed off that references to some of the people I looked up to back in the late 90's are now seen as jokes....referencing kottke on metafilter? The masses don't know the history and think---well, i don't know what they think actually. I'm going to re-rant this later....maybe do a big history of the internet for people who never had to look at a webpage using Netscape.

i guess i'm just wishing that the haters would realize that the Web has been around for a lot longer that they have been aware of....and that it used to be Geeks, Designers, and University kids primarily. That is why it felt like a better signal-to-noise ratio. Anyways...more, later, someday.