There was a time when the internet was cool. One could be forgiven if memories of the cool-internet era have grown fuzzier over the years, now that the web has become a self-regulating machine in an indomitable surveillance system and all. But I know it was true, because I was there. “Information superhighway” was a fitting nickname for a system that could blast the average user through a vast network of art and intelligence. (“Blast” being a relative description of how fast dial-up and early WiFi felt at the time.)
Most of my adult music taste can be traced back to those early days, watching hyper-pixelated videos of the “Numa Numa” guy dancing to Romanian boy-band hits, or animated aliens piloting their spaceship to the thumping Europop of Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” Archaic video hosting sites were a cultural gateway. Laggy Adobe Flash games commandeered afternoons. It was heaven, until it wasn’t.
