NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 21: Actor Lamorne Morris attends the premiere of National Geographic’s “Valley of The Boom” at Tribeca TV Festival on September 21, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for National Geographic)

“Valley Of The Boom” Premieres Jan. 13 At 9 P.M. On Nat Geo

The star of a new show that charts the rise and fall of the internet’s first dot-com boom – and bust – said he hopes viewers will learn the history of the platform that has become indispensable in our lives.

Lamorne Morris is one of the stars of the new series “Valley of the Boom,” a part scripted, part docu-series that retraces the Wild Wild West of the internet’s early days through start-up pioneers Netscape, Facebook precursor TheGlobe.com and Pixelon, one of the first video streaming platforms that paved the way for what is now YouTube.

NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 21: (L-R) Steve Zahn, Matthew Carnahan, Bradley Whitford and Lamorne Morris attend the premiere of National Geographic’s “Valley of The Boom” at Tribeca TV Festival on September 21, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for National Geographic)

“Although it’s not a place, the internet to me is everything,” Morris said. “And if you don’t know your history, it’s almost like you don’t know yourself and where you come from. If you spend most of your day communicating with people through phone, through text, through email, through social media, you might want to pay a little more respect to the people who paved the way, because it wasn’t easy, and it’s still not.”

Morris plays a stockbroker turned narrator who brings the audience through the limited edition dramedy, which is set to premiere in early 2019.

“He breaks certain scenes down, puts it in layman’s terms for certain people,” Morris said of his character. “Even for myself. I would read a scene, not really know what I just read, and then read what my character had to say and then go oh! That’s what I just read. And he’s a wild card. There’s a lot of comedy in my character. He goofs off a lot.”