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What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

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Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#71

Post by erikpukinskis »

I think it's good to remember the nice things about pre-internet and try to protect them/bring them back.

But the internet has one very important job: Allow us to prevent global climate catastrophe. It would be impossible without the internet. Only by integrating all of our cultures together into one giant knot, and having armies of people coordinating together in loose federation can we implement the myriad social, architectural, and cultural changes that we need to do in order to prevent a major environmental calamity from becoming an ecosystem-leveling tragedy.

That sounds very grandiose, and perhaps I'm out of touch, but I'm not really pumping it up for rhetorical effect. That's a pretty flat representation of what I actually believe we are facing.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#72

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #71

I think it's good to remember the nice things about pre-internet and try to protect them/bring them back. But the internet has one very important job: Allow us to prevent global climate catastrophe. It would be impossible without the internet. Only by integrating all of our cultures together into one giant knot, and having armies of people coordinating together in loose federation can we implement the myriad social,…

also, donald trump.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#73

Post by ommunist »

Happens all the time. Since no optic fibre was found in fossil fuels, it seems The Internet dinosaurs used was all the way wireless. Regular glaciation events wiped out old interwebs once in 10-20 thousand years, and we are living close enough to the next glacial period. Use our stone calendars! These are more robust mecia.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#74

Post by ommunist »

jobigoud wrote: post #69
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Mobile phones allow you to connect with your tribe. The Internet allows you to connect with the entire species.

The modest throughput and memory capacity of individuum cannot describe capacity of connection with the entire species. I am not even speaking about linguistical barriers.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#75

Post by ommunist »

okket wrote: post #13
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Phones are important but without the internet they are just phones. Even with GPS, you would have to carry the whole world (or a significant amount of it where you live) as a map within your phone. Early pre-"Smart Phone" PDAs did exactly that (with external GPS receiver). Information wise, Google changed everything. There was a before, where you the information was there, but you couldn't find it and an after, where…

I agree, Google is important milestone. After Google you cannot have the original Internet experience. And if Gopgle hides something, you will never find that out.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#76

Post by fleevy »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #71

I think it's good to remember the nice things about pre-internet and try to protect them/bring them back. But the internet has one very important job: Allow us to prevent global climate catastrophe. It would be impossible without the internet. Only by integrating all of our cultures together into one giant knot, and having armies of people coordinating together in loose federation can we implement the myriad social,…

There's no global climate catastrophe.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#77

Post by visarga »

jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

> This is one of those technologies that changes everything

Another technology with wide impact is the digital camera, which appeared after 2000, and spread in any and all devices today. We will remember the world since the digital camera in a very different way than before. I have a pittance of analog photos, but over 100K digital ones.

People tend to remember only what they photograph. In a few years, we will only remember what we shot pictures of. We tend to lock in those moments to the exclusion of the rest. Along with the internet, I'd say cameras are also a huge influence society.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#78

Post by LarbarBarking »

Was born in 1969. Had a computer since I was 13. At 21, got an Internet account from my uni and I've been online since. It's sometimes difficult to remember pre-Internet since being networked has been part of essentially my entire adult life. Playing a MUD based in Germany. Chatting up girls from Taiwan and France. Getting into pointless arguments with people from everywhere. Using an "app store" (FTP) for the majority of the software on my old Mac LC. Even before the WWW revolution, using FTP, gopher, and usenet archives to get tons of information on random subjects. As early as 2001, I was receiving and responding to email on my little (and overly expensive but it had a color screen!) Samsung flip phone using an app. I remember helping put out a fire at work while I was drunk on vacation by tapping out instructions slowly using T9.

Everything since then has felt evolutionary to me, instead of revolutionary, which is a personal blindness from being so long exposed.

But there's one memory, which is funny to me, that illustrates how much social interaction has changed. In 1999, was sitting with a bunch of friends at a bar. We were usually a talkative group but this night everyone was being a little sullen and quiet. Since no one was doing anything, I pulled out my Palm III and started reading some article AvantGo had downloaded. Everyone else at the table started staring at me and looked a little horrified. My best friend gently took it out of my hand, folded the cover shut, and slipped it back into my pockets. And I never did it again, at least not for a couple of years. By late 2001, my little flip phone had a J2ME text-only browser and I'd read Slashdot on the slow bar nights. By then, it wasn't bothering anyone.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#79

Post by maus42 »

nul_byte wrote: post #4
jpatokal wrote: post #2

I think the more meaningful difference is life before and after mobile phones. This is one of those technologies that changes everything , and it's why mobile phone penetration far exceeds internet penetration -- although smartphones are rapidly closing the gap. As a trivial example, consider meeting a friend. Before, you used to agree on a time and place, and if they didn't show up you had no way of knowing if they…

Access to information has been a double edged sword as well. I am one of the pre-internet oldies and recall how you had to go to the library, and find the book on the topic you wanted to research. It was a case of hoping it was there and not loaned out already, or too old an edition. Quite often, it would already be loaned out, and you had to wait a week or two and then go back, hoping it had been returned on time. E…

I read Umberto Eco's guide to writing an academic thesis in early 00's; I'm too young to have first-hand experience how people did academic research before internet, but the book was from late 1970s, and the description of importance of using bibliographies and other such sources and indexes was intriguing.

I thought it was a useful source for Call of Cthulhu campaign set in 1920s, where investigators are supposed how to use libraries effectively.

Link to review of English translation: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis

And oh, I recently tried starting a habit of keeping an up-to-date directory of greppable markdown notes with links to the papers and books I've read, directly inspired by Eco's index card system and his gigantic private library.

Re: What it feels like to be the last gen to remember life before the internet

#80

Post by kaybe »

fleevy wrote: post #76
erikpukinskis wrote: post #71

I think it's good to remember the nice things about pre-internet and try to protect them/bring them back. But the internet has one very important job: Allow us to prevent global climate catastrophe. It would be impossible without the internet. Only by integrating all of our cultures together into one giant knot, and having armies of people coordinating together in loose federation can we implement the myriad social,…

There's no global climate catastrophe.

Not yet.
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