Please sign my guestbook...
There's still ~75,000 results on google for that string. At least a few thousand are still /guestbook/ pages.
I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
51–60 of 435 posts
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#52Its still there, its just buried under all the other crap. As more and more people generate content, more and more bullshit exists. Unfortunately, Google etc. - despite all their big announcements - can obviously not keep up filtering out that bullshit. We drown in bullshit. Where's the semantic web that was promised? I wonder if we're still paying for the mistakes that were made with the whole XML stuff ...?
I have been playing with the idea of making good old internet portal. A curated list of links to the good stuff. No FB, medium, Instagram or anything like that.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#53I actually enjoy today's Internet much more. I'll lay out the reasons: 1) Easy access to many high quality contents. For example HN is a good platform for accessing new knowledge. Note that I say "access", not "learn". Reading HN sometimes give people the false impression that they are learning new knowledge, which usually is not the case. I treat HN as a platform to get a peek at certain new knowledge, but reading b…
I do believe you're conflating high-bandwidth content with high-quality content.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about the design, it's about the commercialization.
Thing is commercialization made it easier for people to express themselves and actually start using that resource. Commercialization made it form "only nerds sit in there" to "everyone is on the internet and it is cool", if there would be no commercialization, internet for masses would still be a silly toy. Just like going to the Mars - it is just a "hobby" for NASA, most of people on Earth are not giving a damn that…
> if there would be no commercialization, internet for masses would still be a silly toy.
Sure, but part of the fun of the old internet was that it was a silly toy that people didn't take too seriously, at least most of the time, there were definitely still some flamewars stemming from people taking things way too seriously.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#55Admittedly, I miss the “old internet” too, however I have hope we can build it again. As I see it, there are two main issues to solve: 1) It’s no longer trivial to build a “home” page that fits one’s diverse interests. People are lured into frameworks which prescribe a certain level of structure. How do we make it easy for people to freely add content to their “pages” , in whatever form they envision? 2) The “early”…
Regarding 1. When you say "no longer trivial", I would point out that if it isn't now, then it surely never was? Not using a framework (by which I assume you mean the likes of wordpress or squarespace) is still as much possible today as it ever was. And, the knowledge on how to do so is ever more accessible. I can see your point that when provided with easy ways to do things, you are limited to design decisions and c…
I had a friend with zero programming experience who put up a simple webpage for her small business in 1995 with just a text editor and some photos.
Yes, it was much simpler. And it was encouraged, because most ISPs offered free web page hosting - including a free URL, and email - with an access account.
Wordpress is a nightmare in comparison. And a fully engineered blog stack is far beyond the reach of most users.
You could argue that the modern equivalent is a Facebook page, but of course web pages were fully public. You were in a public space, under your own name, limited only by your willingness to learn some very basic HTML.
It's a completely different experience to being in a privatised space with its own content management tools, which you only have very limited user level access to.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#56I just watched Inside [1], where Bo Burnham creates a wonderful, funny, sad and thought-provoking "Special" about our internet culture. Highly recommended. This is one of my favourite songs now: [2] It's a bit crazy when I think about how different our generations grow up and it makes me a bit sad that our children will have a completely different understanding of what the internet is. For me it was a place of wonder…
+1 for "Welcome to the Internet". I was thinking exactly of that song when I read the post!
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#57I just watched Inside [1], where Bo Burnham creates a wonderful, funny, sad and thought-provoking "Special" about our internet culture. Highly recommended. This is one of my favourite songs now: [2] It's a bit crazy when I think about how different our generations grow up and it makes me a bit sad that our children will have a completely different understanding of what the internet is. For me it was a place of wonder…
If I had to distill four decades of "mass Internet" transformation into one phrase:
Independent creator culture (1980-2000), converted into mass consumer culture (2000-2010), and then back into taxed creator culture within walled ecosystems (2010-2020).
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#58In 20 years somebody will write an article about missing this ‘old’ internet from 2021. I wonder what they will miss.
They might, but the piece will be less credible.
Or - Fagoomazon might censor it.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#59Million Short is a nice way to find some of these old websites. It lets you remove the first million search results from your query: https://millionshort.com The thing I really miss about the old Internet are forums. Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and other social media sites lack a certain intimacy. Everyone is somewhat hostile by default and there is no incentive to contribute to the community. It's very different and…
Which is another way of saying part of the problem is the search engines we use to discover the web. IMO, another piece is that Wordpress and similar engines homogenized design-- it's superior but always unsurprising.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#60This sentiment of missing an older internet is one reason like like Hacker News. Slash dot was great in the day. Digg was so great in the day. Then the early days of Reddit were great. I’ve been her for over ten years and Hacker News is still good.
So thank you to the team that runs Hacker News and everyone who comments for making it a good place to come to.