Watch Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric Ask ‘What Is Internet?’ on Today Show

Even the leading minds of the day struggled to stay savvy as the entire world logged online a few decades ago.

Back in 1994, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel and Elizabeth Vargas grappled with the core of modern technology on air, and at the time, the former Today co-hosts weren’t alone in their confusion. But after 30 years of rapid advancements, Gumbel’s comically outdated question — “What is Internet?” — shows just how far the world has come.

The trio’s collective puzzlement bubbled up mid-segment, when an “Internet address” reading “violence@nbc.ge.com” appeared on screen.

“I wasn’t prepared to translate that as I was doing that little tease. That little mark with the ‘A’ and then the ring around it,” Gumbel began in the ‘90s clip, referring to the “@” symbol in the email. 

“At,” Vargas responded, defining what the icon represents.

He agreed, but noted that Couric thought it stood for “about” or “around.”

Still perplexed, Gumbel continued, “I’ve always seen the mark but never heard it said. And then it sounded stupid when I said it: Violence at NBC.”

After Vargas joked about a “big fight up in the lunchroom,” the email address reappeared on screen, and Gumbel even further fumbled the phrasing: “See there it is! Violence at NBC, ge, com,” he said, not verbalizing the “dots” separating the last three words.

“What is Internet, anyway?” Gumbel pondered. The team went on to break it down into simple terms, defining it as a “massive computer network that’s becoming really big now.” 

The now-iconic clip has become a relic of the pre-web world, and in recent years, Couric and Gumbel have called back to their on-camera confusion with a healthy dose of humor. In 2015, the former Today hosts riffed on the moment in a BMW Super Bowl ad, which saw them struggling to comprehend the inner workings of their high-tech vehicle as they rode along together.

A few years later, Couric posted the throwback footage on social media and reflected on how far the world has come since 1994.

“Remember when we didn’t know what internet was? Crazy to think about now, right?” she wrote in her caption from 2018, adding a teasing nod to her ‘90s coif, “PS as usual NICE HAIR!”

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The current morning show stars got in on the fun as well when they celebrated the 25th anniversary of Today’s Studio 1A in 2019. After replaying the clip, Craig Melvin compared their predecessors’ bygone questions to more modern tech mysteries.

“We had a moment like that earlier this week, remember? We were talking about cryptocurrency,” Melvin noted during the broadcast. Carson Daly prompted his co-hosts to think of the questions they ask that may become obvious to the next generation.

“We’re saying, ‘What is Bitcoin?’ ” Savannah Guthrie said, with both Jenna Bush Hager and Al Roker in agreement.