7 highlights from this amazing 1997 'kids' guide to the internet'

Nostalgia can be a misleading, even dangerous, phenomenon. We're often predisposed to remember the good parts, while conveniently forgetting all the bad stuff. As historian Stephanie

Coontz put it in a recent _New York Times_ essay: "Memories, like witnesses, do not always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Which is at least partly why

I was hesitant to click on an innocuous link to a throwback how-to video from 1997 with an equally innocuous title: "The Kids' Guide to the Internet." Technology is

forward-looking. Why dwell on the past? But boy, am I glad I did. SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

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From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. Basically, a couple of kids go over to the the Jamisons'

house to learn all about "surfing the web." The video scores an easy 10 out of 10 on the cheeseball scale, and it's brimming with just about every bad '90s trope you can

think of, from the recurring jingle ("Take a spin / Now you're in, with the tech-no set / You're going surfing on the in-ter-net") to the off-center middle-part hair that

just about every current twenty-something guy sported at some point in his life. That said, there are some creepily prescient gems in there that still hold true today. Here, a few

highlights: 1:20: TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN "Now that I've gotten on the internet, I'd rather be on my computer than just about anything." A free daily email with the

biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com What are the chances this kid's on 4chan today? 3:40: THE GANG ARRIVES! "Hey guys. Mom's just leaving

and Dad said we could have the computer all to ourselves!" And note the rare awkward handshake at 3:42. (Also: Why is the computer in the middle of the living room? Surely there are

closer outlets along the wall.) 4:23: THE LESSON BEGINS "Okay guys..." "...the first thing you need to know…" (Uh-huh.) "…is that the internet is amazing."

(Oh.) 7:03: YOU CAN CONTACT ANYONE YOU WANT! SQUEAKY-VOICED MIDDLE-PART GUY: "Wanna write a letter to President Clinton?" LITTLE KID: "Would he answer us?" SQUEAKY-VOICED

MIDDLE PART GUY: "I bet he would!" Presumably, this was before the existence of the NSA's internet surveillance program. Also: Here's what the White House's website

looked like: 12:06: "WHAT'S A SEARCH ENGINE?" 16:36: PRE-TWITTER "The internet has news lines that give you up-to-the-minute information." Look at all the fun

they're having reading the news. 26:12: THE BIG LESSON MOM: "You have to remember the internet is not a regulated environment, so the quality and accuracy of various information

offerings can differ quite a bit." Today, we have Reddit.