I was going to suggest "Older than Email", but I guess that's pretty ambiguous too. Older than Broadband? Older than Gigabytes? Older than the NES?
Talk:Older Than the Web
Maybe Older than Google.
Let's see...
If the important part is computer-as-media, you have a couple options.
"Older Than The Web" would be, well, that depends on whether you date from the original proposal (1989) or when it started being A Thing on the Net (circa 1995).
"Older Than The PC" would be basically 1980, to split the difference between the Altair and the IBM PC.
"Older Than UseNet" would also be 1980.
"Older Than ARPANET" would be 1969, and would be more accurate than "Older Than The Internet".
If it's not the technology/medium that's important in the name, I'd say just pick a good solid late-60s icon and use that.
Actually, I really am going to recommend September 1993 as the dividing line here. This was the first time that the general public was truly exposed to the open internet -- the month that America Online allowed access to UseNet (see Eternal September). This was also the month of the first beta release of NSCA Mosaic; the first full release happened in November. I can't think of a brighter cultural dividing line than that -- the opening of ports 80 and 119.
Not to mention that this is the year that B5 started, being the first television series to have a creator-fan interaction over the Net.
Okay, then, what's the simple and pithy way to put that?
"After September"?
No, really, how about your suggestion, "Older than the Web". The page itself will clarify the more exact date, but most people will get the idea. And like any clear dividing line, there might be a few exceptions. Though honestly, I doubt many tropes came out of CERN in the early 90s.
I'm pretty sure that in the distant future, schoolchildren will remember that the internet became common in "about 2000". That is, unless they remember the mnemonic, "In nineteen-ninety three, Berners-Lee set info free".
Heh. Okay, I'm cool with that. But that and $5 will get you a vente latte at Starbucks. <grin>
So this feels ready to launch to me. I mean I rewrote and renamed it and all, so of course it feels ready to me. So, second opinion, please.
It would be nice to have one of those wikipedia-style templates linking all of The Oldest Ones in the Book, though.
Well, you know, I was just about to come here and say "launchable". But since you said so two years ago, I'm going to go ahead and launch.
I am skeptical that we need this.
The problem is that most tropes are older than the web. Having a page titled "older than the web" implies that being newer than the web is a typical case, which it's not.
It may even be a better idea to have a page "Newer than the Web", for that reason.
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