A guy I went to college with was there for the birth of the web. I remember him coming back that Fall, and him showing me, on one of our campus NeXTs, this new "World Wide Web" thing. "Cool, I guess. It's like Hypercard," I said, "but not as capable — but it is networked...so how is this better than Gopher? What's the use case?" "Just wait," he replied, "you can't build on Gopher like you can on this." Times changed quickly.
>our campus NeXTs, this new "World Wide Web" thing
Similar story. My lab had 2 NeXT cubes (the monochrome version) and the first time I saw a graphical browser was eye-opening. I had only experienced telnet and gopher before that...
I think this was probably '92-93 - like 3 years before Windows 95 even existed. This experience is what pushed me headlong into the nascent Linux, as the idea of going from NeXT to Windows 95 was like moving from a Ferrari to a tricycle. Linux was no Ferrari but it was at least a pickup truck....
