Well, according to NBC’s The Today Show, circa 1994. In this clip, a perplexed Bryant Gumbel tries to reason what the ‘@’ sign is all about and Katie Couric attempts to explain what this whole Internet thingy is all about. It’s quite funny:

Sure, we joke around that the Internet is primarily used to forward NSFW emails to each other, watch porn, play online poker and the like. And then, there comes the Egypt Uprising. Gotta say, if it weren’t for the Internet, none of this would have been coordinated so quickly. So next time I’m trolling around for Elly Nguyen pictures, I’ll know the mechanisms that allow me to do so, will help spread democracy and freedom in some far corner of the world. Well, that’s what I’m telling myself.