Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus

Class 12 - Users and their Internet Service Providers

Apéritif

RFC as koan

Emulator as koan

Themes

Prompts

Description

Episodes: - S4E1 “So It Goes”, S4E2 “Signal to Noise”, S4E3 “Miscellaneous”

Jumping in 1993, the ISP business is in full swing – many small companies and networks connecting people, yet to be eaten by AOL and other existing, massive companies. Meanwhile, everyday users are increasingly diving into the web, creating “weird” and “cool” and “pointless” websites. We get to live this experience through Gordon’s daughter, Haley.

This is the beginning of the internet that looms large in cultural memory: open and exciting, unstructured, chaotic. There’s a sense of no walled gardens (which is not completely true), just a new frontier where anyone can set up their own personal online homestead just to say “hey! I’m out here!”.

Readings