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The Internet I Knew (2014)

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Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#111

Post by z3t4 »

r3bl wrote: post #89
z3t4 wrote: post #78

Facebook killed most of the old social communities. The big ones where very lucrative basically swimming in cash, they where only replaced by a bigger fish. The non profit forums and IRC channels are still alive. What worries me though is that so many people use smartphones instead of work-station computers. With a smartphone you are mostly a consumer/by-stander. While on a work-station you are actively taking part b…

And you've just described how Instagram and Snapchat took off. You don't need a work-station to post the content. All you need is a camera and a couple of seconds of your life and you're contributing something . Sure, that content might be crappy photo of your breakfast or a short video of you puking rainbow, but it's a content that regular people submitted with little or no effort simply because they had a phone wit…

Uploading photos is not that impressive. You've been able to do that on a PC from the 90's. While it has been interesting to see the 90's repeat itself on the phones, the smartphone's hardware have already surpassed, and there's really no excuse to have such a limited io-interface. The problem is the big players are just fine with their users being just consumers. One step in the right direction is the note (pen/stylus input) devices that give much better precision then using your thumbs, which makes it possible to take advantage of all that screen resolution. What we'll see next is an extra fold-able screen that will give more screen real estate. And general purpose hardware buttons on the sides and back, that apps can use for special functionality. And better voice processing using camera plus mic, so you can talk to the phone.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#112

Post by lloeki »

yoz-y wrote: post #18
waytogo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they did exactly what you were asking for No, MySpace and Facebook didn't what I was asking for because they didn't have any feed then. With MySpace and Facebook in its early days, I could just stalk profiles and both didn't serve me any content based on my interest. On MySpace I could browse through some music genres but this is not my understanding of an interest-driven site.

Twitter has had a feed from the beginning and served you content you wanted, as long as you subscribed to the right people. It still does, as long as you only follow a few people.

> It still does, as long as you only follow a few people

And only if you use a third party client.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#113

Post by ilammy »

r3bl wrote: post #89
z3t4 wrote: post #78

Facebook killed most of the old social communities. The big ones where very lucrative basically swimming in cash, they where only replaced by a bigger fish. The non profit forums and IRC channels are still alive. What worries me though is that so many people use smartphones instead of work-station computers. With a smartphone you are mostly a consumer/by-stander. While on a work-station you are actively taking part b…

And you've just described how Instagram and Snapchat took off. You don't need a work-station to post the content. All you need is a camera and a couple of seconds of your life and you're contributing something . Sure, that content might be crappy photo of your breakfast or a short video of you puking rainbow, but it's a content that regular people submitted with little or no effort simply because they had a phone wit…

I believe the point is that with workstations you get more of a verbal culture, not visual. You have to put more effort into a quality textual post than into a crappy photo of your breakfast. Accessing Internet via phones contributes to the vicious cycle: it's not very convenient to write and read text, you'd better post a photo or watch a video.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#114

Post by veddox »

keithpeter wrote: post #63

OP mentions Paul Ford's tilde club [1], [2]. I really must get around to putting up one of these locally soon - if only to learn about running a Web server in the wild. How would one go about that now? [1] https://medihttp://tilde.club/um.com/message/tilde-club-i-ha... [2] http://tilde.club/ [infinite waiting list... suspect dead]

> How would one go about that now?

If you know your way about Linux and the commandline, it's not that hard. There's plenty of good tutorials out there for (almost) anything you would want to do. Renting a small VPS is not particularly expensive either.

I did it this year and can only recommend it - I learnt a ton in the process :-)

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#115

Post by veddox »

keithpeter wrote: post #63

OP mentions Paul Ford's tilde club [1], [2]. I really must get around to putting up one of these locally soon - if only to learn about running a Web server in the wild. How would one go about that now? [1] https://medihttp://tilde.club/um.com/message/tilde-club-i-ha... [2] http://tilde.club/ [infinite waiting list... suspect dead]

BTW, thanks for mentioning the tilde club! Hadn't heard about that before... A lovely passage from the Medium article:

[Talking about the history of Unix] Fast forward 20 years: Your typical “cloud” Unix server, designed in the 1970s to be a very social place, is today a ghost town with one or two factories still clanking in the town square—factories that receive our email, or accept our Instagram photos and store them, and manage our data. But there’s no one walking around and chatting downtown. Thus when people talk about “cloud computing” they are talking about millions of tiny ghost towns. Ironic, because what do people build on these ghost towns but social networks.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#116

Post by veddox »

klez wrote: post #5
montrose wrote: post #2

This description of the old days is actually a fairly accurate description of HN now.

On old forums (at least the ones I was part of) the community was usually small, and you knew most users and what they thought. Instead on hn most of the comments I see are from people I don't think I ever read from before. Also, here we don't officially have PMs or an official IRC channel, both of which were major parts of the communities I remember (most of the stuff actually happened on IRC, not on the forums).

Absolutely. HN isn't about meeting people, it's about discussing ideas. A very worthwhile objective in its own right, but the two shouldn't be confused.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#117

Post by type0 »

agentultra wrote: post #13

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et al. The Internet was already a social network. You had irc, nntp, http, ftp, etc etc... communication protocols. For communicating with other humans. The only thing Facebook did, in my experience, was make the web anti-social . I distinctly recall when my gro…

I share your sentiments, I remember those "social networks" i.e. forums, irc, etc being a place that actually were centered around social activities. In the late 90s and early 2000s there were numerous communities with their own flare and "internet culture" (in a positive way), they facilitated local meet-ups and were genuinely friendly to new members. Even though users were pseudonymous there wasn't as much hostility as it is now behind the real names on fb, probably because those communities were small and you users actually knew each other. I'm not sure what happened, maybe bullies and jocks found their way to the web, maybe everyone just suddenly became superficial, maybe it's generational changes, who knows...

It's sad in a way, there are glimpses of hope emerging, like matrix and mastodon. Fb has eaten the social networks as I knew it and it came out of the other end to the point that I sometimes call it faecesbook, that summaries it well for me.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#118

Post by keithpeter »

veddox wrote: post #114
keithpeter wrote: post #63

OP mentions Paul Ford's tilde club [1], [2]. I really must get around to putting up one of these locally soon - if only to learn about running a Web server in the wild. How would one go about that now? [1] https://medihttp://tilde.club/um.com/message/tilde-club-i-ha... [2] http://tilde.club/ [infinite waiting list... suspect dead]

> How would one go about that now? If you know your way about Linux and the commandline, it's not that hard. There's plenty of good tutorials out there for (almost) anything you would want to do. Renting a small VPS is not particularly expensive either. I did it this year and can only recommend it - I learnt a ton in the process :-)

That's a plan, thanks

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#119

Post by yakitori »

waytogo wrote: post #8

OT: I don't get social networks. Till today, I don't see any value in real name social networks like Facebook. They should present content I want but they don't, they show upvoted content from my connections which is wrong from a consumer and entertainment perspective. My friends like or share mostly content of people because those people are kind of high-profile in their circles. Not because they post good content.…

> OT: I don't get social networks.

Your comment indicates you understand it very well.

> No thanks and this is why I prefer interest-driven platforms such as HN.

What interest drives HN? HN is no different than FB. Except instead of "high profile" accounts, you get a mod selected drivel.

Ultimately what you are saying is that you want stuff you agree with. That's it. That kind of thinking is why we got the facebook we currently have.

Re: The Internet I Knew (2014)

#120

Post by lyra_comms »

drngdds wrote: post #106
lyra_comms wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

Ironically, the only thing that came up when I googled Lyra Communications was a digital marketing agency with the same name. That's unlucky.

We did research the name in advance and we're happy with it; we're not concerned that another company shares it.
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