Just look how boring the internet was in 1993! It's just a bunch of white text on a black screen. As "playwright and internet enthusiast" John Allen notes, "There's an interesting kind of restraint that you find. I mean there's not a lot of cursing or swearing; there's not a lot of personal cuts; there's not a lot of put-downs that one would expect to find. There's not screenfuls of 'Go to hell.' Which is surprising." And then later "One would think if you were anonymous, you could do whatever you want, but people in a group have their own sense of community in what [they] can do. The thing that I'm always left with is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted, and the only way they can be rooted is through another person, and if this is the way—the only way maybe—that people can talk to somebody, this is how they'll do it.

Johnny—how could you be so right an so wrong at the same time! Does this mean that trolls are late adopters, or was Johnny just cruising the milquetoast-y playwright chat rooms? The report, on the other hand, is rather prescient in its description of the internet as "a world of art, music, sex, guitar construction, conservative politics, grief." That sums the internet in 2012 so succinctly! I mean, what did they leave out? Then when it says that computers would evolve "from adding machines and typewriters to tools of the human spirit," he NAILS IT. Just think of where your Tool of the Human Spirit™ has taken you in the last 24 hours and you will surely agree.

Thank you for playing today's edition of What is an internet?. Stay tuned for the next edition, in which we host returning champion Tom Heatherington (obvs a fake name), aka the ponytail-sporting internet service provider guy from last week's edition!