By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

The World Wide Wayback Machine

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This is pretty cool. A story I wrote for The Boston Phoenix in 1993 was used to illustrate an article in The Boston Globe on the early days of the Web.

Among the interviewees: Michelle Johnson, the first editorial manager of Boston.com, now a Boston University journalism professor; and Barry Shein, the founder of The World, the first company to provide Internet access to members of the public (me among them).

“When I started to put the public on the Internet for the first time, I got flak,” Shein tells the Globe’s Leon Neyfakh. “People thought it was illegal, because for a long time you had to be part of an approved research institution to have access to the Web. So people involved in Internet governance, such as it was … they sent me hate mail saying, ‘You can’t do this. This is not a public resource. You have no right to put people on the Internet.'”

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3 Comments

  1. Miles Fidelman

    Yup. Barry really pushed the envelope, back in the day. Much appreciated by many (except, of course, those who pushed back).

  2. Dan, is there any way you can post the full 5/7/93 Phoenix article?

    • Dan Kennedy

      Not without retyping it, @Jerry. But I’ve had a few requests, so maybe I will. Thanks.

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