Serial Experiments Lain turns 21 today.

Someone born on the same day Serial Experiments Lain premiered on Japanese Television would today become old enough to drink alcohol in the United States.

A lot of the discussion around Lain is how "Prophetic" it was regarding the nature of the Internet.  What I find interesting is how part of the reason for that is people forgetting how old the Internet actually is.

I'm serious, there is an increasing tendency to think of it as purely a 21st century aspect of Pop Culture and in the 90s only true hyper tech nerds had access to it, The Internet Historian hasn't covered any 90s Internet history yet.  However there was in fact a movie called "You've Got Mail" made the same year as Lain.  As a wrestling fan I know that Jim Cornette was already making proto rant Vlogs on the WWF's official website in 1997.  

General Public access to the Internet opened in 1992 and by 1995 was already fairly widespread.  My first favorite Website to visit was SMBHQ, that site started in 96 and I remember the runner of the site talking about how he was inspired by the lack of good Mario fan-sites at the time, implying other franchises already had decent ones.

Basically just like every alleged "Prophecy" of the Simpsons, Lain was about what was already happening on the Internet, but we today see it as predicting our more modern versions of that.

It also wouldn't surprise me if in Japan the Net was becoming mainstream faster then it was in America during the 90s.  Before Japan's mid 90s Economic Crash they were in certain ways technologically ahead of us, remember they dominated the Video Game industry.   And one of the most fascinating little known facts is how Japanese TV was broadcasting in High Definition already in 1989, that's why Hotaru has a Flat Screen TV on Sailor Moon S in 95/96.  Akiharbara's original reputation was as a tech hub, and we see it play that role in the second episode of the Pretty Sammy OVA released in 96 before the TV anime started, where Washu humorously claimed credit for the Internet.

Usually when something becomes a ubiquitous part of daily life people start imagining it to be older then it really is.  So why has the opposite happened to the Internet?

It might have to do with how much the face of the modern Internet is younger then that.  YouTube started in 2005 and all the other hubs of modern "Social Media" are even younger.  Even 4Chan is a site that didn't exist yet in the 90s and it's the most popular still existing relic of the early net.

But also partly because there were plenty of people who didn't have access to the Internet right away.  I'm pretty sure I didn't till 1999, and it seems Digibro was later to getting on it then I was, so it's natural he'd think there were no Normies on the Internet yet in the 90s.