Intermezzo II The Agora

The Internet's origins as a primarily academic and military medium by default did not present itself as an attractive commercial space. Before the 1990's and the advent of the World Wide Web, it was not a widely explored venue for aesthetic inquiry. During the 1980's, the wider online community consisted of privately-owned bulletin board systems, and isolated providers such as Delphi and Compuserve(now part of AOL), which are significant in that they did support large, active forums for the discussion of digital art. It was not until 1991, when Tim Berners-Lee would create the basis for the World Wide Web that distributed networks would prove viable as a widely available social space. In 1992, there were only 100 web sites, which is a far comparison from current numbers, and it is safe to say that at the time only the pioneers of net.art were considering the medium.