Reminiscing on the old internet

One of the benefits of being born in the early-mid 90s is living the first days of the 'Write' era of the internet, when publishing was democratized.

I recently began reading Read Write Own by Chris Dixon, which took me on an emotional rollercoaster of recalling all of the social media platforms that arguably shaped who I am today.

The book begins by summarizing the history of the internet and takes you down memory lane of when it all started, what platforms survived, died, thrived and ultimately controlled the entire developer landscape–hindering creativity and stifling innovation.

This was *obviously* not mentioned in the book, but in the early 2000s my brother and I would use my grandfather’s computer to chat with random strangers on a website called OZQ8, or the “Oz of Kuwait.”

It didn’t occur to me or my brother at the time that OZQ8 was an independent website hosted on the internet. It was not a centralized platform like Google or Twitter. I didn’t need to “sign up” to use the chat/dardasha platform and could easily use it anonymous…