Not suggesting this is the origin of the term in popular parlance, but the net art writer Alan Sondheim has been using the term darknet since the 1990s.  He had in mind command-line clients and shells, as opposed to the graphical browsers then taking over. 



On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 6:23 PM Marc Weber <marc@webhistory.org> wrote:
I’m happy to introduce the journalist to a couple of the security/crypto pioneers who are advisors to the Internet History Program; these are the folks I’d go to for more detail. 
There’s also the author of The Dark Net, Jamie Bartlett, which is a really nice book though I honestly don’t remember how extensive his early history section was.
Best, 
Marc 

On Apr 9, 2018, at 14:20, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote:

I got a query from a journalist about the origins of the Dark Web. I don’t really know what was going on before Sealand and Tor in the early 2000s. Anyone working on this?

thanks,
Janet

Dr. Janet Abbate
Professor, Science, Technology and Society
Virginia Tech





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Marc Weber  |   marc@webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868 
Internet History Program Curatorial Director, Computer History Museum            
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory
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Matthew Kirschenbaum
Professor of English
Director, Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies
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