Paper Short Abstract:

This study is based on a web questionnaire about users’ memories of, and reflections on the early internet. The paper presents results from the questionnaire about how respondents remember and imagine their first encounter with the internet and discuss how these imaginaries shape our understanding of the digital in present days.

Paper Abstract:

Research on the history of the internet often focuses on the infrastructures, stakeholders and funders that were influential in the development of networked computer communication and what came to be the internet. In contrast, this paper explores these developments from a user perspective, focusing on the memories, practices and experiences of ‘ordinary people’ of the early internet. This study is based on a web questionnaire conducted in 2024 in Sweden about early internet use, focusing on everyday practices and users’ memories of, and reflections on, the time-period when the commercial internet was introduced in the early 1990s. The paper presents preliminary results from the questionnaire, narratives that tell us about past imaginaries of the internet, including nostalgia, exciting and boring aspects of “surfing” on the internet, or views of the digital as gradually sneaking in our everyday life, or as a revolution. We will also discuss how these imaginaries shape our understanding of the digital in present days.