MovieChat Forums > The Net (1995) Discussion > I remember seeing this in 1995 at the mo...

I remember seeing this in 1995 at the movies

posted 3 years ago by Connie93 (826)
4 replies | jump to latest

I had literally no idea what THE NET was; there were two computers at school that had it, in the library, but they only let the nerds on it.

So this movie was my introduction to the internet, and how everything in our lives would end up being on a computer and they could literally find out anything they wanted about us, and with a click of a mouse, they could eliminate our lives.

I don't think anyone of us had any idea just how all pervausive that technological revolution would become.

There is a scene where they are at the beach both on their laptops and he says 'look at us, in the most beautiful place in the world and here we are on our computers'.

Flash forward twent years, and everyone was glued to the internet, except on their smart phones.

Much good has come from the Net, but as this movie warned, it could be very detrimental to society as a whole.

I would say that the NET effect of the internet has been bad.

[–] Burk48917 (11386) 2 years ago

The internet was pretty widespread by 1995. Seems hard to believe you had no idea what it was. I'm not a particularly techy person, but I was pretty familiar with the goings on in this movie.

[–] Phids (776) 2 months ago

I think it depended upon how you lived your life. I used Prodigy in the early 1990s, which was basically a limited, proprietary bbs type of network, and I also used to use dial up bbs sites since the early 1990s. However, I didn't hear about the world wide web as a global network until Spring 1995. You have to remember that at the time, the internet didn't really provide any real needs for most people. Things began to change rapidly in the years leading up to 2000.

[–] Burk48917 (11386) 2 months ago

I think you're off by a few years. By 1995, AOL was all over tv with ads, and sending those free disks to everyone. Even if you weren't signing up, you had to be aware of it. Maybe not young kids, but I was still a teenager, albeit older. Hackers came out this same year, so movie producers were well aware of people's engagement with the internet. Sure, it wasn't in every home, but that's different from saying someone was completely unaware of it.

[–] Phids (776) 2 months ago

Yes but AOL was originally like Prodigy or CompuServe - a dial-up proprietary service that offered bulletin boards and other community features - but I wouldn't consider this truly the internet/world wide web per say. I always considered it like a large, closed bbs system in the tradition of the smaller bbs offerings of the 80s/early 90s. I actually remember when Prodigy made the move by allowing users to "access the web", which means people could go off and explore web pages that were outside the Prodigy microcosm, and this probably happened right around mid/late 1995. So yes, there were a lot of AOL disks being mailed around that time, but this was because AOL was trying to get people to subscribe to its private service.