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The Internet Used to be a Place We Go To

Peace be upon you, fellow digital traveller.

There was a time when the “family computer” sat in the family room. Around this time in the 90s’ not every household — especially in developing countries — had a computer, but I was lucky to grow up in a household that had a computer at that time. And then came the Internet.

I remember coming back from school, I would immediately drop my bag and rush to the computer. I only have a few hours until my parents come home from work. I turned on the family Gateway PC, the 56k modem made a loud screeching noise as it attempted to establish a connection to the ISP providing me with access to the Internet.

I check my Yahoo Mail inbox for any e-mail I may have received. I reply to any ICQ messages that came in while I was offline. I then check the front page of Yahoo for news. Logged on to Yahoo Chat to see who is around and then launched mIRC right after that. Then, if there is nothing interesting, I just surf random webpages online. And without me realising, time was up.

I disconnect and log off, freeing the phone line. I click “shut down” to initiate the shutdown sequence for the computer, and I watch as the CRT computer screen go black.

In the ‘old’ internet, there is a ritualistic nature to it. There are things you have to do to get online, and once done, there are things you do to log off. The Internet used to be a place that you go to. It has a doorway that you open and walk in, and after you’re done, you walk out and close it.

There is a clear separation between the real world and the digital realm. The Internet used to have a sense of ‘space’ or ‘location’ to it. Things on the Internet metaphorically symbolised a sense of ‘place’ that you go to, and it is reflected in the online jargon that we use at that time — Homepage, note the word ‘Home’; Web address, note the word ‘address’; Chat room, note the word ‘room’.

If you had the chance to experience the old Geocities internet, you would have noticed that many of the old web designs took the term ‘Homepage’ literally. Many have virtual ‘doorways’. You tend to see links that say, “click here to enter” as if you are entering a place.

Most websites in those days would display a visitor counter and a guestbook, where visitors were encouraged to leave a note about their experience.

Geocities — one of the earliest platforms that let users build personal websites — fully embraced this sense of place. Its communities were organised into themed "neighbourhoods" named after real-world locations, Area 51, Hollywood, Capitol Hill. Your little site didn’t just exist online — it lived in a neighbourhood.

I have never given much thought to the act of logging in and logging off. I never noticed these boundaries between the real-world and the digital realm. We move through doorways, arrive, and we left. The internet lives in a place, and that place had a door. It took a long time for me to notice the door went missing.

Today in 2025, the internet is no longer a place we go to, it is always there with us. We take out our phones, and we are on the web. Notifications from the digital realm vibrates physical phones in our pocket, demanding our attention. There is no more sense of boundaries and place. We no longer log in and log off; we no longer arrive and leave. We can’t leave.

Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice

And she said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device"

And in the master's chambers, they gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back to the place I was before

"Relax," said the night man, "We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"

Eerie lyrics from The Eagles — Hotel California.

Psychology of a Door

Spaces with defined entrances and exits — even symbolic ones — give us a sense of orientation and belonging. They offer safety and control. A door is a threshold, a passage between one state or environment and another.

There’s a well-documented phenomenon in psychology called the “doorway effect.” Have you ever walked into a room intending to do something, only to forget what it was once you got there? Studies suggest our brains compartmentalise experiences by location — the doorway acts as an event boundary, segmenting our memory.

Perhaps we didn’t think much about this when we removed the door to the internet. Without it, we’ve lost the ability to compartmentalise the offline and the online.

Was it for the sake of convenience and efficiency that we discarded the ritual of logging in and logging off?

In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), Neil Postman warned us about electronic media. He was deeply critical of television and the way it redefined truth, knowledge, and culture. In the final chapter, he emphasised the importance of understanding the politics and the epistemology of media — how each medium shapes the structure of our discourse.

Maybe we haven’t thought hard enough about the politics and epistemology of the internet. Television once reshaped modern culture. Now, the always-on Internet with its bottomless pit of digital media has assumed that role — faster, deeper, and more immersive.

Previously, there was a symbolic door that separated the Internet and the rest of the world, now this door ceases to exist. Should we let this new medium of communication take full control of our culture direction unchecked?

There is a lot to ponder on, but for now, I just want you to realise that the door is missing and there is no way we can close it anymore.

Stay glitched, stay human.

Jibone