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Demon's founding subscribers, remarked at the time that setting up his Demon account was "a bit like giving birth--so difficult that afterwards you can never quite remember how you did it." The help manual for that early software suite--or perhaps garage sale would be a better phrase--was incomprehensibly written for packet radio (a system for transmitting data via radio), and Demon's technical support guys helped you out over the phone by poring over the original program code.

It was just in time. Those of us who got onto the Internet in the summer of 1993 were the earliest fringes of what became massive waves of commercial immigration from 1994 onward. We were probably the last newcomers to glimpse the Net as it was before the boundary disputes between cyberspace and the real world began in earnest. Those of us whose real lives have become inextricably intertwined with cyberspace find these disputes difficult, like having the country you were born and raised in go to war with the country to which you've emigrated. But it is through these battles that the future in which our descendants will live is being defined.

It's easy to let nostalgia take over and imagine that the years leading up to 1993 were quiet, perhaps accompanied by the distant strains of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. But they weren't. When you track down the histories and memories of the early days of the Net that have been written and posted, you find that wherever and whenever there has been change on the Net there have always been net.wars. People complained, debated, and flamed--a Net word for sending angry, attacking messages--in 1986, a time mythologically dubbed The Great Renaming, when the structure of Usenet was reorganized into the present collection of hierarchies to make it easier for people to find the subjects they were interested in.[7] People complained, debated, and flamed some more about the cultural shift when Bitnet, an early network of electronic mailing lists started at the City University of New York, was made accessible via Usenet, the global collection of discussion groups available to Internet users (and many others).

And each year there was September.

To understand about September, you must consult the alt.culture.usenet FAQ, maintained by Tom Seidenberg. He defines September this way:

The time when college students return to school and start to post stupid questions, repost MAKE MONEY FAST, break rules of netiquette, and just generally make life on Usenet more difficult than at other times of the year. Unfortunately, it has been September since 1993. With the growing sensationalism surrounding the "Information-Superhighway" in the United States, the current September is likely to last into the next century.[8]

One habit the Net developed in its early days to suit its own needs is the practice of creating information files, at least one per newsgroup, lovingly maintained by volunteers. Known as FAQs, for "Frequently Asked Questions," these repositories of useful information are carefully documented lists of the answers to questions old- timers wish were asked less frequently. The newcomer arriving on alt.fan.letterman and asking for the millionth time that week how to get tickets for the Big Shew will be told in no uncertain terms to go read the FAQ. He will probably not be told how to do this: one of the less pleasant sides of old-time Net users is a lack of patience with newcomers' ignorance.

David DeLaney, in his four-part "Net.Legends FAQ," made the definition of September a rule ("There are no hard-and-fast Rules on Usenet, only Guidelines"):

Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net.

Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong ... ][9]