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I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
71–80 of 435 posts
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#72I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".
As someone who cannot process video, agreed this is genuinely insulting. To me, the majority of knowledge distillation is quickly becoming like cheap snacking - you get a bit, it leaves you wanting, but is ultimately bad for you.
There are tools to download the automatic captions of youtube videos as text. I do this with a lot of videos.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#73I 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).
What happens next?
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#74This 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.
I agree. I think HN in the perfect combination of the old internet, with the text-only posts, and the web 2.0 way of doing likes and threaded conversations. And, of course, the moderation keeping it all in check. I'm grateful that I can come here every day.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So who takes on the full-time job of curation? Could probably get donations eventually, but the portal would have to sufficiently succeed first.
Wiki? With a double approval before the edit happens?
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#76I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".
Even more annoying: it's now considered necessary to have a bunch of videos about any major new product or project. Video production is either very expensive, very time consuming, or both, so it's a new "tax" that you have to pay to look serious.
Watching the videos at 2-2.5x helps a lot. YT supports 2x natively and there is an extension that lets you go even faster.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#77This 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.
Slashdot still exists, and the text internet is still a thing. It takes a deliberate effort to seek out smaller communities.
I run one myself, because I want more of them to exist.
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
What happens next?
Predicting the future is a more lucrative talent than summarizing the past, and I'm not that rich. :)
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#79I 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…
HN used to be better imho
Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)
#80I remember the backlash against unique designs where everyone said they just wanted plain sites, with the information in focus. Now when big parts of internet basically have become standardized and sterile everyone wants these unique designs back.
It's not the same thing. What everyone misses are the personal, hobbyist, non-commercial websites. This was replaced by things like Facebook, Wikia, Pinterest, Twitter, Medium, which are both constrained and ad-ridden. A bit of that old web still live in places like Tumblr. The "every site looking the same" thing is fine, however, and still preferred for commercial sites, government, newspapers, startups, other utili…
The sad part is that those websites do exist, but are nigh impossible to stumble upon except in association with a particular context.
For example, small communities around specific interests, and personal sites of authors of specific works.
We really just need a concentrated effort to catalogue and curate them under a single banner. These efforts also do exist, but haven't yet reached critical mass. Probably because policing content is a full-time job.