There was an Internet in the 1980s, but it was crude and hostile compared with what exists today.

Remember, it was the World Wide Web in 1993 that made the Internet a useful tool. Before then, the Internet was text-based. It ran primarily on Unix computers and used the UUCP, or Unix-to-Unix Copy program, to send and receive information. Stuff basically floated around the Internet from computer to computer, text only.

The most popular Internet service I remember using was USENET, also known as the news.

There were various news threads you could follow, many of which still exist today. The messages appeared serially, similar to a blog or chat room.

I remember reading on the various Star Trek threads about Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was airing live at the time. Oh, those trekkies would debate about the silliest things! “Is Warp 1 the speed of light” and blah-blah-blah.

Then there was Internet email, but it wasn’t really that popular because it was difficult to get an Internet account. The Internet was found mostly at government institutions and universities. Rare was the private system that would let you have an account. Even then, it was a dial-up account you paid for, often by the minute.

I remember living outside Seattle and having to dial into a system near Chicago to use the Internet in 1991.

Before about 1994 or so, most modem users (as online people were called back then) had multiple email accounts. It was considered impressive to adorn your business card with your CompuServe, GEnie, MCI Mail, and other email addresses. The multiple accounts were necessary in that not everyone subscribed to the same email service. In fact, “checking your email” usually took a while just to dial into the various providers and see whether any mail was waiting.

My computers were pretty much all monochrome until the 1990s. And while the Mac had graphics, the PC really didn’t need them for the longest time.

In the mid-1980s, Microsoft Word was the first word processor that actually showed — gasp! — italic text on the screen. OMZG! Normally italic text appeared underlined on a monochrome screen or in the color blue on a color screen.

Eventually, several developers figured out the italics trick. WordPerfect version 6 offered not only italic text on the screen, but graphics in a special WYSIWYG preview window.

WYSIWYG, or wizzy-wig, means What You See Is What You Get. It was the big buzzword of the early 1990s, which meant that the screen displayed exactly what was printed. It was a marvel on the PC in those days.

Next time, and for the last element of this series, I discuss the horrible issue of PC memory management.