Just because this scene seems familiar

Previous: In the prehistoric Internet Museum, see the future of Web3

Welcome to this collection in my Internet Museum. This is an artifact that helps us understand the various compromises in the Web3 world today.

Through it, we can understand what compromises were made at the beginning of an industry to achieve a visioned future, and how those compromises disappeared.

169 net

At that time, China Telecom had two networks, 163 and 169. 163 is the real Internet, but it is very expensive. In addition to the 4 yuan per minute call fee, there is also a 6 yuan per minute Internet connection fee. Imagine using the Internet for an hour and spending 600 RMB. At that time, the salary of college graduates was about 1,000 yuan per month, which was not enough to use the Internet for two hours a month. 163 The scientific name of the network is called China Public Computer Internet ; the scientific name of 169 is called China Public Multimedia Communication Network (people do not call themselves the Internet).

This is a list of proxy servers for 169.com. After dialing 169 to the Internet, you still need to use these (free) proxy servers before you can access the real Internet.

Mind you, this is a world without broadband. Not only is there no optical fiber, there is no ordinary network cable, and there is even no technology such as ISDN and ADSL on the telephone line. Internet users need an ordinary telephone line, plus a modem (Modem), commonly known as a cat, dial-up to go to the Internet. The rate of Internet access is 56Kbps. The pure text part of this article is about 80K * 8 = 640K bits, and it takes about ten seconds to transmit. As for these few pictures, it is not enough for a few minutes (the so-called “multiple pictures kill cats”).

The side chain of 169.com (which all Web3 practitioners understand) is a local area network in China that only provides access to local telecom resources, such as the resources at the end of Shanghai Telecom’s .sh.cn , which are not connected to the real Internet. Only charge 4 yuan per minute for phone calls. But good-hearted people with international Internet exports have built a free proxy server on 169, which can access the external network from the 10.xxx.xxx.xxx network segment. After setting it in the browser, you can use the 169 tariff to enjoy the 163 treatment, which is a bit similar to what the good-hearted people of Optimism and Polygan are doing now that Ethereum is too expensive.

Never underestimate the development of technology in ten years

Very fast, when the wheel of history is rolling forward, technology is developing rapidly, applications are constantly emerging, and infrastructure is advancing rapidly. When the network speed has been expanded several times by broadband, tariffs have changed from minute-by-minute billing to monthly subscription, and monthly broadband fees have dropped. When it comes to half a day’s salary for college graduates, especially the 169 network is directly connected to the entire Internet, all the servers set up by these kind people become unnecessary.

This page of paper inspires current blockchain practitioners and users to never underestimate the ten-year development of technology. Blockchain is now full of problems. Just to name a few: too high fees, too low capacity, too slow speed, lost passwords that cannot be retrieved, rampant hacking attacks, lack of cross-chain solutions, low user base, lack of popular applications, etc. . . .

However, there is a saying called “Bitter or not, think of the Red Army’s 25,000”.

Think about the early days of the Internet, no matter how big the problem is now, it’s still better than it was back then.

No matter how expensive it is, can it be more expensive than reading a text version of the web page in the early days, and the phone bill of ten yuan will go out?

No matter how difficult it is to install a wallet , to develop a netizen than at that time, he needs to spend 10,000 yuan (how many months’ salary for a college graduate?) to buy a computer, then buy a cat, and then bring his ID card to the post and telecommunications office to dial up Is it difficult to get online? (Of course, another insight is that this path will stagnate when it reaches 100 million netizens in China, and eventually 1 billion users will be swept online. It is indeed not this path, but mobile phones plus 5G)

No matter how few applications of blockchain , if you look at what was on 169 at that time, you would know. Not to mention 169.com, there are no websites that can be viewed on the entire Internet. Harvard’s website has only one page, and it still looks like this:

On the home page of Harvard University, which I copied by hand at the time, it only wrote “This is an experimental page. If you have any suggestions for improvement, write to me.”. No links, nothing. What about other universities? No website yet.

See the history, often see the future

Everyone knows that I enjoy debunking the big words and mystifying behaviors in the blockchain space. However, I never laugh at this technology, this industry, and never doubt the unimaginable future that this tide will bring in the future. why? Just look at the world recorded on these two pages in my little notebook, and then look at the present world. The world now is far beyond my wildest imagination at the time.

A bit of information can be transmitted to any corner of the world in seconds at a very low cost. This is an underlying technology. Although so young at the time, technicians could see its future at a glance.

Now, once a bit of information is written into a large global table, it can never be changed. This is also the underlying technology. What will this bring? Most of the crazy imaginations now, although they may not happen strictly according to these imaginations, but the whole should be pretty much the same.

That’s why I’m still infinitely optimistic looking at the poor Web3 world.

Just because this scene seems familiar.

Post note: Anyone attending the Cat tile street party in Dalifornia this weekend? I have a share on “Web3 from the Prehistoric Internet” on the 19th at 3pm. If you can chat together in the past.