The Earliest Days of The Atlantic Online

"The Atlantic launched its website in November 1995, 138 years after it first went into print. The magazine began in response to one information revolution; the website appeared at the dawn of another. Now, 30 years on from the launch, you can buy a copy of the first printed edition of the magazine on eBay, but you can't find much of the original website. The internet, notable for remembering just about everything, seems to have forgotten that particular piece of its own history."

"We may recall what the dial-up modem's weird dirge sounded like, but it's hard to quite recapture what happened after it stopped. The early evidence that does survive-the wild optimism, the comically bad predictions, the Flash art-are as easily mocked as they are forgotten. But the scattered remnants of the Atlantic Unbound, as the magazine's early digital forays were called, point to an idealism that was genuine in its moment: a time when people believed that online space could foster serious reading and intellectual exchange."

"In December 1995, that year was hailed by Newsweek as "the Year of the Internet," marking the decisive turning point in online life. It was the year people began to move out of the closed ecosystems of services like AOL, where you logged in and didn't venture beyond its mail services, chat rooms, and internal content. You could reach the wider internet, but doing so was clunky and limited."

The Atlantic launched its website in November 1995, 138 years after its first print edition, marking a transition into a new information revolution. Much of the original website has been lost despite the internet's reputation for memory. Early online life combined genuine idealism with comical predictions, Flash art, and optimism, and fostered efforts to promote serious reading and intellectual exchange. In December 1995 Newsweek hailed the year as 'the Year of the Internet,' as users began moving beyond closed services like AOL, though access remained clunky and internet adoption was still limited in American households.

Read at The Atlantic