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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

#81

Post by maus42 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #24

For the benefit of younger generations, here's everything you need to know about the pre-internet era: You didn't miss anything. Everything was strictly worse. Much, much worse. It makes me shudder to even think about any of it. Count yourselves lucky that you didn't have to live through those dark ages. If you ever feel the urge say something like "but the internet gave us mass surveillance", just stop and think wet…

>If you ever feel the urge say something like "but the internet gave us mass surveillance", just stop and think wether you would really complain about hospital waiting times to someone who had to have surgery before the invention of anesthetics

...I'm sorry, I don't understand how that parable is supposed to make sense.

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

#82

Post by dpweb »

Coming from the perspective of an excited child computer hobbyist in the 1980s and seeing it go mainstream (bigger than anticipated), alot of feelings, both positive and negative. Negative for instance the weaponization and corporate control. But -- overall more positive than negative.

What's funny to me though, we used to have this term "killer app". The specific app that made a platform blow-up..

Well, if you remember the 90s, the killer app for the Internet (we used to use capital I, too by the way) was porn. Clearly.. Porn. That always makes me smile when people get a little too carried away about the net's importance in the world.

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

#83

Post by majewsky »

throwanem wrote: post #49
eli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt your skills are so specific to the internet that you would be unemployable in a universe without it.

Says the guy whose company is so specific to the Internet that it wouldn't exist in a world without one. Not that I don't see what you're saying, but there are a lot of us out here who've built careers around the Internet which are, at the very least, far better than any other prospect that might've been available to us. Certainly in my own case - absent the Internet, I'm nothing but a mouthy unlettered redneck with…

I think you got the original article wrong. The author didn't argue against the connected life. He observed that the people who know life without the internet are starting to go extinct, and argues that we should preserve the unconnected experience by going offline for a few days every so often.

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

#84

Post by prodmerc »

tzs wrote: post #68
codeulike wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its a double edged sword, the positive edge is massive and sharp and very useful, and the negative edge of the sword is like a little needle, that perhaps provides a slight pain in the arse now and then. I remember before, and after is so much better.

The negative edge is what allows Donald Trump to be a viable candidate for President of the United States. It allows people with extreme views who before would have not had close contact with more than a handful of people with similar views (and then often only through inefficient means like a monthly newsletter and its letters column) to find each other and effectively organize in groups large enough to have an impa…

Yeah, it's amazing how a tool that let's you find all the facts led to people finding all the facts they want and already believe and using that to further dig themselves into a hole that they believe is real.

Though it was easier to just control the masses with TVs and radios - they cant talk back, so you can spout whatever you want at them and they'll follow.

Pretty sure that Trump would've been just as popular today if the Internet was not around.

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

#85

Post by majewsky »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #24

For the benefit of younger generations, here's everything you need to know about the pre-internet era: You didn't miss anything. Everything was strictly worse. Much, much worse. It makes me shudder to even think about any of it. Count yourselves lucky that you didn't have to live through those dark ages. If you ever feel the urge say something like "but the internet gave us mass surveillance", just stop and think wet…

That analogy is stupid. We are only slowly beginning to grasp the full gravity of mass surveillance.

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

#86

Post by CM30 »

prodmerc wrote: post #84
tzs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The negative edge is what allows Donald Trump to be a viable candidate for President of the United States. It allows people with extreme views who before would have not had close contact with more than a handful of people with similar views (and then often only through inefficient means like a monthly newsletter and its letters column) to find each other and effectively organize in groups large enough to have an impa…

Yeah, it's amazing how a tool that let's you find all the facts led to people finding all the facts they want and already believe and using that to further dig themselves into a hole that they believe is real. Though it was easier to just control the masses with TVs and radios - they cant talk back, so you can spout whatever you want at them and they'll follow. Pretty sure that Trump would've been just as popular tod…

If the media liked him, he could have been a far more popular presidential candidate without the internet. In those places where the local press liked Trump, people would think he was the only viable candidate.

The internet has made people wiser and more savvy too. They've stopped one interest group from being able to make their views and messages seem like the only one.

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

#87

Post by NEDM64 »

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.

Read the title: AWWW

Read this comment: DOH...

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

#88

Post by NEDM64 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #24

For the benefit of younger generations, here's everything you need to know about the pre-internet era: You didn't miss anything. Everything was strictly worse. Much, much worse. It makes me shudder to even think about any of it. Count yourselves lucky that you didn't have to live through those dark ages. If you ever feel the urge say something like "but the internet gave us mass surveillance", just stop and think wet…

It wasn't "much worse".

Some things were more inconvenient, but other things were simpler.

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

#89

Post by NEDM64 »

What was good before the Internet, we were a lot more ignorant, and that was a bliss.

You went to your doctor, and just did what he told you to do.

You just went to the mall, and bought a TV home without comparing prices on your mobile phone.

If you were lost on your car, well, you spent a little on gas until you found a way home.

You didn't need to pay for Spotify or Apple Music to discover new music, you just listened to music your friends at school lent you.

The reading the news wasn't that important, but journalism was a responsible thing.

No social network metrics pressure on kids.

There were these things called travel agencies. OMG.

etc.

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

#90

Post by xbmcuser »

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,…

We have already crossed the point of no return. At the rate humanity is going it will take at least 20 years to stop increasing our carbon footprint let alone stop or reverse it. And most of the climate studies have been wrong not that there is no climate change instead most studies have been too conservative the rate of change is a lot faster.
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