The fear of the early internet, as seen through ’90s TV shows

polygon.com:

In 1994, my parents made me change schools, which came with all the typical challenges — and, from my sixth grade perspective, just two benefits.

The first was that I could talk to my classmates about my media interests without worrying about being pulled out of class. Both teachers and staff members at my old school had brought me to the chapel for lengthy discussions over whether Magic: The Gathering, pogs, and Exosquad were sufficiently Christian. I was therefore at least able to make new friends over our shared enthusiasm for two TV programs that debuted that year: Reboot and Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad.

Computer Lab Week is our ode to the classic “school” games, like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers, that kept us from being productive. Sure, you should be doing homework, but Carmen Sandiego is on the loose!

The second was my new school’s computer lab: 35 Mac PowerPCs monitor-to-monitor in a double horseshoe formation inside an enclosed section of the library. Though my dad had just brought a similar computer home, the computer lab offered so much more. It offered opportunities for me and my friends to share Kid Pix art, work out networking problems with the lab technician, and, most importantly, enjoy consistent and fast internet access.

In retrospect, I should have recognized how intertwined these two aspects of my new school actually were.

Part of what drew me to Reboot and Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad is how they depict computers and networks as living ecosystems — as places where beings live, like in 1982’s Tron, the most notable prior representation of the digital world. That two shows coming out in the same year chose that specific setting was perhaps just a sign of how much digital technology was in