I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the

nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

Perhaps every generation feels like they're living at the pinnacle of technological innovation.

It's natural, we suppose, when amazing new devices are appearing like magic.

It might be funny now to watch those old 90s videos about surfing the World Wide Web, but back then, it felt like an adventure into unknown territory,

and we were full of endless possibility. And the thing was, you could also turn off that endless possibility anytime you

wanted. We didn't carry the internet around in our pockets yet. We were dialing up electric

paths across cities and states and countries, and we were connecting. We knew it was the beginning

of something big. And those AOL chat rooms,

they hated to see us coming. Though information traveled fast back then, it was nothing like it is

today. What society did have, though, besides a lot of viruses from the illegal downloading of

music, were email chains and spam and

early internet conspiracies brewing just about anywhere a person could post.

Message boards, web forums, if you like, they were huge.

Even back then, they weren't so different from a subreddit, if that helps you get the picture.

Don't email us about the particulars. We're painting with wide strokes here. At least one of us

was there and, unfortunately, remembers a lot of it. Now, moving on, those early days, speeding along

invisible highways, it felt like living in the future,

in a way that's difficult to explain to anyone who didn't sincerely believe that the world just

might end on December 31, 1999. But when so much potential dropped in our collective lapse and opened up not just the world,

but the possibility of new worlds, who could really blame us? The Matrix? It felt more like a

predictive documentary than just mindless entertainment. Though in retrospect, those payphones,

...