h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It was September 1989, and Usenet was still relatively useful and functional. A loose-knit group of people who called themselves ''editors'' set out to work up a Request For Comment document for the Internet. It was ''a very unevenly edited memo and contains many passages which simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.'' It claimed to be indispensible, but upon examining it today it looked more like superfluous. In fact, it appears to be a document that wanted to cover everything but in the process got bogged down into eternally being a first draft for something else.

Still, it has a certain charm. It wanted to take the Internet, which continued to get more and more confusing with each passing day, and make some sense out of it for the average person.

I think, basically, it brought attention to the fact that it was going to be impossible to properly appreciate the Internet without some sort of guide telling people where to go and how to get there. In other words, h2g2.com has been long expected. Some people have been waiting for literally decades.

But they never panicked. They knew Douglas Adams would arrive someday; fashionably late. It's both amusing and enlightening now to look back on RFC1118 and marvel at how far we have come in ten years. DOS was still king. The World Wide Web was a dream. There was email and Usenet and that was largely it. Oh, and some guy named Archie who no one seems to recall now...

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Internet circa 1989
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1118.html