In the late 1990s, while living in Redmond, WA (Seattle), I traveled to another state for work. This was long before smartphones, laptops, Wi-Fi, and the expectation to access the internet anywhere we happened to be. While I was there, I wanted to check my email. I had been teaching internet classes at the Redmond Public Library for a while at that point, so I figured the local public library would also a publicly accessible computers like we did at home. So I stopped in and signed up to use one of their computers. In the web browser I typed in Hotmail.com… but instead of my inbox, I got a standard message that said the site was blocked – the same message libraries displayed when patrons tried to access porn sites on their computers (at least back then.)
At first I assumed it was a mistake. Hotmail had been around a year or two by then, and it was a simple web-based email service. I went up to the library staff and explained that hotmail.com was blocked, and I was hoping they could unblock it. I still remember that they seems slightly annoyed – or maybe offended – that I was asking to get on that website. They told me it wasn’t a website they allowed people to access at the library. It was one of my earliest memories of thinking I was in a sit-com. I thought to myself, WHY wouldn’t they allow people to check email at a public library? I tried to convince them that the site was safe, but they would have none of it. They told me it’s blocked and they wouldn’t be unblocking it. I don’t remember my exact words, but I was surprised and confused… and I mentioned that our public library at home allowed people to check email with no problem. Then THEY were confused. They asked what the website was again. Then I laughed… What I SAID is EXACTLY what they HEARD… “HOT MALE .com”!
“No… it is Hotmail – H-O-T-M-A-I-L. Its web-based email.” As in, HoTMaiL, or HTML email. Then they got it. And they laughed. But, they didn’t have the ability to unblock the site – but they said they would pass it on to their tech support to figure out.
At the time, the (public) web was still pretty new. And web-based email was an even newer idea. I’m guessing most people today (who weren’t involved in technology in the mid-to-late 1990s) wouldn’t really get why this is funny.
HoTMaiL was created by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia and launched in 1996, and brilliantly named for exactly what it was – HTML code.
More than 25 years later, it’s one of my favorite geek stories about the early web… and trying to explain to some librarians why they should let me browse a ‘porn site’ at the library.
