In January 1993 there were 10 websites. Not 10 websites dedicated solely to changing the transmission fluid in a Lexus LS 400 saloon, or 10 websites dissecting the moral universe of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. Ten websites, as they say in America, period. That was the whole of the internet.
Fast forward to March 1994 and the new frontier was hastily being settled. Scan down the list of websites registered that year – Microsoft, BBC online, Yahoo, plus of course Bianca’s Smut Shack and Sex.com, who were, if we’re honest, really on to something – and there is a sense of an empire rising in the shadows, the architecture of a vast new world being quietly winched into place.
