this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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Wait, who was using "old Internet" if not boomers?
The nerds who made the tech.
Psst.. the nerds were mostly boomers...
I know my one professor used punch cards and worked on some of the data structures. But it was people who cared about how tech worked.
Most boomers I know still can't use a mouse. Millennials and gen X fill most of the old Internet in my mind, but the original '91 Internet was a lot of tech focused boomers, but also was significantly Gen X. '95-'99 seemed to pick up more traction with my generation.
I think it's sample bias. I graduated with a CS degree in 85 and started working as a software engineer in aerospace. It was pretty much all boomers when I started.
There might be more people from later generations who grew up doing their homework on computers, so the disparity between tech folks and non-tech folks in those later generations seems less, but the Internet was mostly created by boomer tech people.
I'm the senior manager of the organization I started in in 85, and I still have boomers working for me.