Video Professor: Learn to use the Internet (1995)

The Video Professor and his student helper Suzanne take us on a tour of the Internet via Prodigy, circa May 1995. Back then Yahoo was a manually compiled list of links, rather than a search engine!

[@TCGProductions03]

This is one of the most 90s things ever.

[@educate9946]

'-)

[@megabojan1993]

Gosh, I miss the 1990s :(

[@Tumbbi]

MegaBojan1993 why?

[@megabojan1993]

Life was much better for me in the 90s, also people were nicer back then. That's why I miss the 90s so much.

[@MacXpert74]

Close, very close. But of course you can't get more 90s than "2 unlimited' :D

[@MicroBuddy5]

2:31 I love how she just turns to the camera and does the fakest grin for about 1 second and turns right back like nothing ever happened. Freaking hilarious.

[@Mhmd_F]

I totally knew she'd do something like that, wouldn't be 90s otherwise

[@tengkusulaiman]

She is a 90s fembot like in Austin Powers movie.

[@asd36f]

Probably thinking that porno job she turned down would pay more and wouldn''t be as humiliating LOL

[@debarghyaroy9948]

😂

[@daveys]

That look to the camera said so much, like “I don’t want to be here, but it’s a paying gig”. As soon as I saw that look, I knew there’d be at least one comment about it already.

[@markusTegelane]

What is the internet? In the 90s - Infornation highway Today - Wtf I can't even explain

[@hingeslevers]

I always love the term The Information Super-Highway

[@vwestlife]

I'm surprised Mr. Professor didn't refer to it as "cyberspace". But I think that was more of a late '90s "dot com bubble" buzzword.

[@duszeksmsaczek6394]

In 2000s - Information superhighway after broadband rules the internet 2020s - Wow everyone is cryptocurrency trader now.

[@alexmihai22]

Internet is exactly what the therm says: inter - net(s), inter-net connection(s), it means multiple points interconnected.

[@DevineInnovations]

A better question is, "What ISN'T the internet?"

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

6:35 The professor recommends a modem of at least 14.4 bps. I think he means kbps, else you will be loading every single page overnight!

[@adidaman1234]

4 Megs of RAM? 3 and a half Megs of hard drive space? do they think we're all rich?

[@AlyphRat]

It may sound nothing for ya, but back then. 4MBs of RAM is like 4GBs of RAM today.

[@AlyphRat]

That's the joke you idiot.²

[@diamondminer8577]

OMG xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[@togwam]

Adam Panitch ikr 😂 I can barely afford 1 kilo of ram!

[@rerolledDK]

Actually 4 megs was kind of low in 1995. Running Windows 95 with only 4 megs of RAM was painful.

[@AshtonCoolman]

"And by the end of this tape, you'll be one of the growing number of individuals that are discovering the SECRETS and the PLEASURES of the internet" - Oh we have.....we have....

[@CoreDreamStudios]

lol

[@henzinador]

Who would imagine, right?...

[@avamnepohui7260]

The Internet is for p...😀😂

[@philipsoderberg6857]

It is amusing to see what was available as computer training 22 years ago.

[@educate9946]

Well done, Susan!

[@markusTegelane]

Celipon Suzanne****

[@nicolae788]

nice archive. It sure is '95...at minute 14:54 the top story on the welcome page from Prodigy it's a title related to O.J. Simpson scandal !

[@megabojan1993]

So did he really do it, or was he innocent? :)

[@nicolae788]

who knows ? who cares ? :)

[@hingeslevers]

If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit!

[@kenkobra]

@@megabojan1993 Mark Fuhrman turned it in a race trial.

[@Madness832]

Yup, we'll be speedin' down the information highway @ 14.4k, maybe 28.8k (if we're lucky!). Time to party like it's 1995!

[@GelatinousSSnake]

Who the hell is Susan? I want Pam!

[@JulioLopez-xz5kx]

Think I saw Suzanne in a porno once

[@P53eud0nym05]

Suzanne. Alexa’s great grandma.

[@legionofdoom2009]

What was the point of having Suzanne there? She only appeared for a few seconds and then only talked for a few seconds. And when she talked, she sounded like a 12 year old girl.

[@RetroRPM72]

I've done everything it told me to do in the video.... but I still can't seem to connect to the internet. I rewinded the tape and watched it twice, and I'm still stuck.

[@offrails]

My first exposure to the web was through Prodigy back in 1995 - lots of nostalgia there, though if I were Santa and someone used ALL CAPS to ask for a new modem, they would be getting a lump of coal for Christmas.

[@MacXpert74]

Fun stuff, but the video needed more 'Suzanne'!

[@seanmatthewking]

I clicked for Suzanne, and I was disappointed by the startling lack of Suzanne in the video. I thought she was our internet professor. FOR SHAME!

[@LovingMyJourney]

I didn't go online until September 2000. I had dial-up for years and taught myself to navigate the web. It's mindboggling how quickly technology has changed since I was a kid in the 60s.

[@tengkusulaiman]

1998

[@Hopefu11y]

This video makes me feel nostalgic - and old. My 22-yr old self would've loved broadband. Man, you needed patience back then! Miss the 90s...

[@robintst]

3:56 "The beauty of the internet is that we don't have to know about how it works. We can just accept the fact that it does work..." 😬

[@GlitchyBastard]

This video must be made with Newtek Video Toaster, I just can't forget that distinctive Character Generator and LightWave 3D feeling!!!

[@vwestlife]

Quite likely, as Video Professor's Windows 3.1 video was made using Video Toaster.

[@GlitchyBastard]

:-D

[@Thomas-im6ft]

look at the keyboard in the opening animation

[@mattmanguy]

34:00 Holy sh**, the slowness...could make a meal while waiting for that one image to load. Those were the days...

[@admiralalcatraz6080]

The innernet........

[@MacXpert74]

Sigh, I wanted the Outernet!

[@hingeslevers]

The Innernette...

[@DevineInnovations]

Parachute or non-parachute?

[@alexmihai22]

it was 1999 or 1998 when I first browsed on the Internet with a friend. I remember how we searched for cars from Need for Speed. I was 11 years old :)

[@alexmihai22]

I think we were using Netscape.

[@alexmihai22]

As a browser, Netscape was better than the Internet Explorer back then :)

[@FlintG]

This is so much nostalgia as a 90s kid.

[@martergaming]

im a 2000's kid

[@helmaschine1885]

Videos like this make me feel ancient because i was born this year and it looks so different to today. I've really been alive a long ass time.

[@frazzleface753]

In 1987, I remember our school using a BBC Micro to send messages to people in Iceland(?) via a modem. I sent a message to a kid called Magnus, but I don't remember him responding. Are you still out there Magnus? lol

[@dennisjohnson1893]

I love the latest news when Prodigy boots up, "DNA expert says OJ,s blood was found at the murder scene" I feel really old now!

[@adamholmes91]

What a very informative video, i now know how to use the internets. Thank you!

[@strawberryjam3670]

If they only knew

[@mkkris73]

This brings back memories.

[@andycristea]

Internet? It's just a fad, it'll never catch on...

[@dumb5308]

Thank you! Now I am ready to surf the interwebs! Can't wait to search on Yahoo!

[@ian_b]

Now Suzanne, this is a webcam. And this is ICQ, on which people can tell you what they want you to do next.

[@TheRealE1337ist]

Neat! Semi-ancient relics. Thanks for the upload!

[@bluetech7753]

I remember these videos I used to have these on VHS and some of them I had on CD-ROM.

[@ewkalt4770]

thanks for uploading these, i love these

[@nbluejay6762]

This makes me think of how *far* we've come.

[@TheComputerGuy96]

You're going surfing on the Internet!

[@Rockband2991]

TheComputerGuy96 wrong video

[@DevineInnovations]

(shows a guy with a surf board) "Ha ha ha. No, not THAT kind of surfing!"

[@NISSANZ33]

Alright guys, I think Im ready to get on the information highway now!

[@vwestlife]

Normally it was called the "information SUPERhighway".

[@NISSANZ33]

VWestlife yeah, thats how i recall it too

[@SimpsonsCameos]

The internet is a series of tubes.

[@applescruff1969]

SimpsonsCameos And there are men who want to stick their privates into those tubes and into your childrens bedroom.

[@crb19961]

Anyone else notice Suzanne's facial expression at 2:34 - 2:37? what kind of smile was that?

[@DevineInnovations]

The kind of smile you get from a girl way out of your league.

[@IntrusiveApe]

sees girl on the video, scrolls down to comments, half of the comments are about suzanne. the internet is so predictable.

[@scottcol23]

This might seem funny now, but in the 90's the internet was not easy to figure out (unless you used AOL prodigy, Compuserve...) At my house we used prodigy for a few months, I would have been in 7th grade at the time (1995). Then we switched to a VERY small local ISP startup that offered a fair unlimited dial up plan. I had been dialing in to BBS's for a while by this time so I picked it up quickly. I remember trying to figure out how to connect to an FTP server and download the "Hey Macaroni" screen saver in 1996. It took me forever.

[@ChatGPT1111]

Boy do I feel old when somebody who could easily be my kid talks about the good 'ole days. (Was in 7th grade in 1972 😂) My high school in 1977 had a room sized IBM mainframe with no display that read paper cards typed on a mechanical machine and displayed only through a deafening line printer. When the Apple II came out in 1977 and my rich friend played chess on it, I thought the future had truly arrived 😂

[@dionizas]

It was nice when he mentioned IRC, Im still on it until this day! (Yes it's still alive) And I remember those days when you had to wait for an image to load. Even know I got online for the first time in 2000.

[@maxeli6888]

Hardly any girls nowadays that look as good as Suzanne. All we have now are starbucks chugging iPhone touting clones.

[@levithecat748]

Society has gone mad.

[@GreatMewtwo]

It's crazy how far we came in 26 years.

[@Lexicoley1826]

“Computer dealer” Damn, we really did have a dealer for everything back in the 90s.

[@MagicFerret69]

I am too old. I remember the birth of the internet. Before that I ran a bbs

[@CoreDreamStudios]

same here, my first experience with 'online' was on QuantiumLink on C64, I was 7 yrs old :)

[@David-wh8zs]

I can't believe that I just watched this trough.

[@BeautifulAngelBlossom]

David's Music I wub your profile picture

[@David-wh8zs]

This can be inappropriate so don't read it if you are sensitive since this is a family channel: So you open my channel and zoom in on my profile picture and you want to stick your stick in your screen to wub my picture? At least print it out and cut a hole in it man :)

[@Kippykip]

Degenerates...

[@David-wh8zs]

yep

[@akaiuwu]

David's Music we all are, aren't we lmao

[@KillaTbone1]

Professor, what exactly is the internet? Well Susan, it's a new way to watch porn.

[@ernestolombardo5811]

And cat pictures. How could you forget cat pictures?

[@SJBrianexe]

Brings us back to the 90s. Well done and thank you. Is this one of those videos advertised on TV by that old man with a name like John Scherer?

[@geoseffr]

really hope someone makes a ytp of this

[@AmongGangstas]

I remember owning this tape lol. I watched it several times, hoping one day to be able to access the www

[@JimLeonard]

Aww, you did it in 60p just for me? Now I can see the chroma dot crawl in full motion! I'm touched :-) (but grateful, since it's the principle that counts) Hey, there's some good Prodigy footage in here.

[@Treborbobuk]

Wow so many memories.... I remember nagging my dad to get us a modem in about 1993, (14.4 U.S Robotics) so I could connect to the local BBS in the paper, soon after the AOL & Compuserve CD's started coming on the front of computer mags & in the post, we used them a bunch back then - rolling from free month to free month! Huge phone bills...disconnects when someone went to use the phone when you were online, fun times!

[@DavidB-rx3km]

15:37 "But we've promised a drive on the information highway ... so let's go find that on-ramp" - UGH.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

These really take me back to the 1990s.

[@StariusPrime]

I'm not gonna lie to you, I miss those days.

[@LightWrathme]

It's not a big truck! It's a series of tubes!

[@dazednconfused31337]

Last time I went on the net with 3.11 was when I was given a Compaq LTE 25 Mhz B&W laptop on work experience in Y2K. Connected my serial modem, got hold of Trumpet Winsock (eh?) and Opera web browser (when it had adverts). Shame it had the world's biggest dock (ISA NIC?) and no standalone PSU. A mate would get similar ones from car boot sales and use them in high school, until a teacher tripped over the huge adapter and it let go with a flash!

[@OnlyEdandTheAlmost]

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens referred to the Internet as "a series of tubes."

[@qbertguy]

There you go, that's why I refer to emojis as smileys. Because that's what we used to call them

[@j2simpso]

I inserted the prodigy disk but could not hear Voodo People playing on my computer. What did I do wrong Professor? 😂

[@rarbiart]

after the extremly cheesy intro you already know what you will face in a few moments... but having seen it: it was even more 1990ies as expected. this is a masterpiece of "how not to design Userinterfaces".

[@DevineInnovations]

Cheesy? You mean AWESOME!!!

[@sophist1cated]

I have Internet since 1996 and never had a dial-up modem. We had something called ISDN here in Germany, which was a digital network. No stupid noises during dial up and a simultaneous telephone call was also possible. Connection to the provider was established in a blink. Speedwise is wasn't much faster than the fastest modem, 64 Kbit/s on one line and two combined 128kbit/s (but double cost).

[@wrightmf]

you never used dial-up? wow, you must be rich.

[@TheCanadianToast]

35:31 That is when you're wrong. Today, it's called internet cache. The internet browser stores files onto your hard drive from the website you visit for the first time that it loads, so the next time you visit the website, the internet browser goes through the cache, so that it can load the website faster. That is when clearing your cache comes in when your internet experience goes sluggish for whatever reason... Or... does anyone here use the CCleaner computer software? :P

[@Nexfero]

10:25 i like how they changed the colors of windows to yellow and blue to match the Prodigy logo

[@DusteDdekay]

Excellent! Thanks! :D

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

7:26 Oh my gosh, they're using Prodigy!

[@AlyphRat]

Isn't it ironic watching a video about how to use Internet from 90s, while using a more modern internet technology to watch it?

[@gordonhaddow8345]

Do you think they knew they were making an instructional video tape about the thing that would ultimately end the need for instructional video tapes...

[@ogjalena]

41:30 I love having keyboard conversations with other people! I talk about my keyboards all the time! Some people don't quite get it though.

[@kbhasi]

Wow. It appears that the Prodigy service used what looks like a rebranded version of NCSA Mosaic, which is interesting to me, though wouldn't have been interesting for the time. I think AOL might have used the Trident engine from Internet Explorer for the Web component (on their Windows version) of its software (then later switched to using Chromium's Blink engine in the 2010s) 42:20 Wow, I didn't know there were MMO games in the 90s.

[@vwestlife]

Internet Explorer didn't exist yet when this video was made!

[@wrightmf]

Mosiac was my first browser, I used a local company Wombat in Palo Alto for internet access.

[@alexthelion335]

41:03 wow people do sometimes make big mistakes. dailing, should it be dialing?

[@thomasschreiber9559]

no Google, it was Alta Vista and Yahoo.

[@thomasschreiber9559]

I don't think that woman's voice is really Suzanne, they're trying to fake us out

[@stephaneedwardson1370]

Suzanne, please click the button to maximize your browser window!

[@Jarend3]

We all finally get to try his product

[@squishysam]

I find this video very helpful.

[@levithecat748]

When I was 4 years old, in 1995.

[@fuyerwolf3117]

Wait! Does the Bill Clinton email still work? I wanna ask him about his relations with a certain woman.

[@tengkusulaiman]

In 1988, I was trying to find way to comunicate with KITT. As a kid I thought any computer would help to send a message to it. Haha, I kept it as my childhood secret till now.

[@JohnAudioTech]

They gave Al Gore's address so people could thank him for inventing the Internet.

[@GreenAppelPie]

I found this stuff pretty self explanatory at the time, did people really need whole videos?

[@kbhasi]

Yes, if they were new to computers and didn't want to go through all the books included in their software boxes.

[@lmoore3rd]

2:43 This VHS is so old it predates the comical "the internet is a series of tubes" metaphor by a whole decade.

[@chicagochris1988]

But i dont have a 486 or 4mb of ram :( and my monitor isnt running VGA. Its run the old HDMI technology :(

[@kenantahir]

Yaye we got educated about what the internet is! 1990s internet was so simple!!

[@anajay78]

Yes I finally know how to use the Internet thank you for postkng.

[@Markski]

Modem connected to phone line and access gateway to dial to, jesus christ

[@togwam]

This is my new favorite anime

[@churblefurbles]

I wonder how AI upscaling would handle the screen caps.

[@romansroad2007]

old days i remember those days ...years ago

[@proka1]

why no 4k resolution

[@tostoday]

You've Got Mail!

[@orin654]

dark times those 90's

[@mayorb3366]

Remember CompuServe?

[@vwestlife]

Yes, I was a member!

[@hormelinc]

Ok who dialed the modem numbers to see if they were still connected?

[@pashedmotatos]

Why would you

[@filipmac1545]

which browser is better, k melion or seamonkey

[@vwestlife]

I don't know.

[@randywatson8347]

I like Pam more. Now I know why some people type in caps lol 20:00 Fun fact... I managed to connect to the internet from a 80286 machine using Lynx browser in 2022. Google search looks like teletext.

[@jaredfix9273]

the best 90's ever

[@moncorp1]

I remember being in a radio shack back in 1991 that had a couple of pc's set up showing the internet. I was young and stupid and wondered why anyone would ever want that.

[@filthylucreonyoutube]

46 minutes of nostalgia tears.