It’s funny how far the Internet has come in the last few years. Web 2.0 is now practically old hat, so ubiquitous are its features, and most websites nowdays even seem to look the same, or at least conform to the same styles - clean lines, tabs, slickly integrated advertising and plenty of space for users’ comments (think Amazon’s latest makeover, for example). But while I was researching an article for Micro Mart this week, I came across several corners of the Internet I’d almost forgotten existed.

Like Usenet newsgroups, for one thing. Nowadays, they’re hosted by Google Groups (which has archives dating back to around 1981) so they’ve been slightly updated, but essentially, they’re still out there - and thriving. Since the advent of social networking and, actually, before that, the arrival of cheap and easy-to-use forum software, I’d imagined that newsgroups would have been abandoned; mere ghost-towns now, with tumbleweed whistling through them. But I was wrong. They’re alive and well.

Less alive and less well but nonetheless present and accessible are all sorts of ancient websites, built during the 1990s when services like Homestead, Angelfire and GeoCities let anyone and everyone create their own personal homepages. Imagine the absolute worst MySpace profile layout you’ve ever seen - it’s a delight compared to what most of these sites used to look like. (And I should know; I built several, and they were all embarrassingly terrible.) The templates provided by Homestead et al were pretty awful, but they were nothing compared with the monstrosities that people with the barest knowledge of HTML could come up with. The old adage of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing definitely applies here; we’re talking animated blinking gifs, pop-ups, frames, tinkling wav music files, hit counters and garish background images. The text usually came in colours specifically selected to hurt your eyes most when viewed against the patterned backgrounds, with line breaks in odd places and hyperlinks in yet another contrasting colour.

Shudder.

Say what you like about social media and user generated content, but at least the Internet looks nicer nowadays. And though some of the worst sartorial fashions of the last few decades seem to be making a comeback (neon legwarmers? Really?) we can at least be grateful that Facebook maintains its nice, calming blue template no matter what.

It makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? In another 10 years, what will still be around, and what will we look back on and cringe?

(Edited: how did I manage to type “days” instead of “years”? Oops!)