Retrospective about Compuserve and the pre-web Internet

There even used to be a CompuServe magazine. Look at those fin de seventies slab serifs.

Compuserve. Image via Archive.org

When I first got online in 1994 or so, the World Wide Web was in full flower but had yet to obscure other efforts to bring people together on the Internet. CompuServe was among them, and even then was surprisingly durable: it was founded in 1969, offered to enthusiasts in 1979, and survived to be eaten by prevailing comp…