by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books
“Before the Internet,” Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Onename, writes on his blog, “there was Usenet — the world’s first and largest community.
“Anyone could run their own server, connect to other computers (over dial-up!) and start receiving/sending messages. No one controlled Usenet. It was organic.
“It attracted creative souls to it like a magnet. As long as you could connect to a single Usenet server, you could get access to exciting new world of information — like lighting up a candle from another.”
A decade after the Usenet popped up, the World Wide Web showed up.