I feel the same about the early (home) internet (years 1994-1999). Adverts if they even existed on a page were just a few lame gifs on a page. IRC and usenet were the “social media” of the time, except no-one called it that. Almost everyone online was as much of a geek as you (except AOL users), because the hoops to get online were significant enough to keep most normal people away. Businesses were convinced it was a fad, so didn’t get too involved.
It was basically universities, students and a handful of modem owners that could get a TCP/IP stack to work and write a login script (ppp was quite rare in the beginning).
Rose-tinted glasses? Maybe, but there’s a lot not to like about the modern internet.
Bill pay. Maps. Wikipedia. Every Song Ever. Every Movie Ever. Every re-run ever. Almost all the games. Communication about weird hobbies with people across the globe. Email your favorite author or artist directly. Free e-books from 5000BC to 1935 AD. Online tickets for travel. Online shopping. Podcasting. Online music collaboration.
Postal mail still a thing.
There is a lot to like about the contemporary internet. Perhaps people are less grateful now.
I set up one of the first Echomail and Fidonet nodes in my country and was pretty active in the days the internet started. It was such a community effort, and seeing people start to grab hold and use it was a complete rush. To see what it turned into is utterly heartbreaking, but I guess it was predictable.
I see everyone talk about how we need to drive Linux adoption, and I get scared as fuck about what that would mean to Linux in 20 years. I don’t want to see that community vaporize the same way.
I loved the old BBS community. I used to run an Amiga based BBS (also on Fidonet, I would say my node number, but it can still be looked up today, and we used real names so…). One day I had a drive failure and lost pretty much everything. No problem, said another Amiga BBS operator in my city. Bring your new HDD over and we’ll copy over my downloads folder.
I feel the same about the early (home) internet (years 1994-1999). Adverts if they even existed on a page were just a few lame gifs on a page. IRC and usenet were the “social media” of the time, except no-one called it that. Almost everyone online was as much of a geek as you (except AOL users), because the hoops to get online were significant enough to keep most normal people away. Businesses were convinced it was a fad, so didn’t get too involved.
It was basically universities, students and a handful of modem owners that could get a TCP/IP stack to work and write a login script (ppp was quite rare in the beginning).
Rose-tinted glasses? Maybe, but there’s a lot not to like about the modern internet.
Bill pay. Maps. Wikipedia. Every Song Ever. Every Movie Ever. Every re-run ever. Almost all the games. Communication about weird hobbies with people across the globe. Email your favorite author or artist directly. Free e-books from 5000BC to 1935 AD. Online tickets for travel. Online shopping. Podcasting. Online music collaboration.
Postal mail still a thing.
There is a lot to like about the contemporary internet. Perhaps people are less grateful now.
“every re-run ever” - except when streaming platforms decide to delete stuff forever arbitrarily, because they give zero shits about preservation.
Stop, you’re making me cry.
I set up one of the first Echomail and Fidonet nodes in my country and was pretty active in the days the internet started. It was such a community effort, and seeing people start to grab hold and use it was a complete rush. To see what it turned into is utterly heartbreaking, but I guess it was predictable.
I see everyone talk about how we need to drive Linux adoption, and I get scared as fuck about what that would mean to Linux in 20 years. I don’t want to see that community vaporize the same way.
I loved the old BBS community. I used to run an Amiga based BBS (also on Fidonet, I would say my node number, but it can still be looked up today, and we used real names so…). One day I had a drive failure and lost pretty much everything. No problem, said another Amiga BBS operator in my city. Bring your new HDD over and we’ll copy over my downloads folder.