The Telegarden (1995-2004)

What a beautiful part of the old internet, and one I wish was still running.

I knew of various webcams etc, but some of the more interesting parts of the old internet are still surfacing and surprising me today. I wish I'd known about this then. I recall browsing so many things and not valuing them because I didn't know that so much would disappear.

What a wave of nostalgia!

The Telegarden was incredible! I read about it in a book about interesting places on the internet, which my dad bought for me shortly after we got our first home computer on the web, around 1996. I believe it was shortly after the Garden was moved from Berkeley to the AEC.

The incredible feeling of clicking a button in a webpage, waiting a few minutes, and then seeing the result of a robot's movement 5,000 miles away was just mindblowing.

The Telegarden was my first chat room, first 'social' account, and first human interaction online. Amazingly, tending the garden became less exciting than getting to know all of these interesting people from around the world. It was a unique community like I want to imagine still exists in tiny pockets of the old web.

Those robotic arms don't sell for tooooo terribly much used now. Someday I'd love to try replicating the site, though I don't know if it's possible to have that same social experience on the modern web.