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The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

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Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#211

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

I don't know about web3, but somehow github is quite similar to what we had in the olden days; just search for 'awesome any-topic' in github search, and you will get a curated list of interesting links on nearly any-topic. Also github pages lets you do your own homepage in a git repository, so it's a bit like geocities ;-) I mean our benevolent owners at microsoft give us a free space for self expression, which isn't a facebook/google style walled garden and targeted add pusher, or medium like subscription extractor. It's even better than geocities, they don't put up any adds at all!

You even have the 'The definitive list of lists (of lists)' https://github.com/jnv/lists - looks like the same old culture that moved over to a new home in the sun. (now this spaceship is very fragile, and might disappear upon any minor change of the EULA on github, matters as usual ;-)

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#213

Post by marginalia_nu »

jjulius wrote: post #197
marginalia_nu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I've begun to think of the whole small internet movement as a countrerculture phenomenon. It's got a lot of touching stones with the bohemians, the beats, the hippies, etc. What they've all got in common is a search for independence, authenticity and community. I do think the retro-aesthetic is more of a statement than anything else. It's like the long hair of a hippie. Like there's no reason a hippie coul…

Eh, I'm with you on your general sentiment, and I definitely think websites can still embody the "old web" spirit while using HTML/CSS to stand out in a way that's different from "old web" aesthetics. The problem with the Bootstrap example is that Bootstrap is exactly the kind of overly-bloated, JS-heavy (depending on use) Web 2.0 tool that the "old web" spirit is firmly against. A hippie can live like a hippie and s…

There is js-heavy pages in the independent web space as well. There are certainly some that wouldn't touch it with a 60 ft pole, but it's a very heterogenous group, and I wouldn't put it past someone to do it ironically, as an art project (like that random startup generator[1]). Which is really my point. The common denominator is independence, authenticity, community, not some particular aesthetic.

[1] http://tiffzhang.com/startup/

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#214

Post by dmz73 »

To me the biggest difference between the "old" internet and current web is the advertising. It is not just the adds that are so much more prevalent, the web sites are designed to be visually appealing and that detracts from any content that might be there. "Old" internet had information and links to other information. "New" internet is all about facade with little content, just a title here, picture there, short video to grab attention and then hopefully serve as many adds as possible without (or before) turning you away.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#215

Post by freeflight »

The old culture, social and technical, will never come back.

In the mid 90s the Internet was a medium that only around 1% of the world population had access to [0].

Getting online wasn't just some casual thing, people had to invest, money, time and effort to get online, so the whole "online experience" used to be treated very differently.

As everybody had to jump trough these hoops to get online, there was usually at least some shared interests about people that managed to find each other online.

Contrast that with today, where thanks to smartphones the majority of the world (65%) have access to the Internet like the most normal thing in the world, in most cases no special knowledge or major effort required anymore to "get in".

That Eternal September-esque [1] change in culture can't be reversed. Maybe it could be emulated on way smaller scales, with a lot of effort and segregation, but that would defeat the whole spirit and purpose of it.

[0] https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#216

Post by eezurr »

I think the reason the old internet was what it was was because the barrier to entry was much higher (computers cost a lot of money in the 90s/ early 00s, you needed to learn HTML (at a minimum) to put a website together, and you had to have a phone line available for dial up, you had to be curious or have curious friends to learn about the cool websites out there, etc.).

All of those filters meant a narrow spectrum of the population participated on the internet. It also meant the ratio of creator to consumer was much smaller. The market sold to itself (other creators), not just consumers; or in other words, the community existed to serve itself.

I think the same idea can be applied to any creative outlet (music, art..). As soon as everyone has access, and the old filters (e.g. the RIAA, publishers) are torn down, it loses its uniqueness and glamor and the culture collapses, morals aside.

The next "big thing" will have a high barrier to entry, whether it be costing a lot of money, or requiring a specific skillset that takes time to learn. It will attract driven people who live to create and build. And like everything else, the barrier will eventually be torn down leaving mediocracy in its place.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#217

Post by chrisfinazzo »

zrm wrote: post #198
XorNot wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter point is that the rise of quality search engines has reduced the value of "well organized". Consider that one of the premier features of the Jetbrains IDE is "search everywhere" which will search command help text for you as well and then return the command as a possible result - much easier to describe what you're trying to do and be led to the exact command, then try to understand the mind of the person…

> The counter point is that the rise of quality search engines has reduced the value of "well organized". I wonder how much of this is still true. Google results from a few years ago were much better than they are now. That's a combination of SEO ruining the results by Google assuming anything not hosted on a megaplatform is suspect and not showing it plus SEO ruining results by still being there in them despite that…

I have to wonder if the degrading of search results came solely from SEO dark patterns that do more harm than good, or if Google actively believed that small sites were becoming less relevant as social took off. Objectively, looking at PageRank might convince them that Facebook and Twitter were where people were spending time, but that particular firehose is so big it can - and eventually did - dilute nearly all the other relevant results.

Pipe dream: If someone wishes hard enough, maybe we can convince the Apollo guys to leave Yahoo alone so it can return to its roots as (surprise!) a directory.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#218

Post by chrisfinazzo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #203
XorNot wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter point is that the rise of quality search engines has reduced the value of "well organized". Consider that one of the premier features of the Jetbrains IDE is "search everywhere" which will search command help text for you as well and then return the command as a possible result - much easier to describe what you're trying to do and be led to the exact command, then try to understand the mind of the person…

It was the rise of tagging and folksonomies (now known as #hashtags) which made the blogs halfway usable. Because they allow you to search within the archived posts for the sub-topic you're interested in.

But wasn't the raison d'etre of Google links to other sites, thereby giving some sense of how popular a given page was?

This helps individual sites, but says little about why the overall quality of links has nosedived. Who they link to continues to matter, except that now there is so much noise this is very difficult to get right unless you are extremely clever, lucky, or probably both.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#219

Post by foxfired »

The problem is that there is no real definition of the old Internet. All we know is what it isn't. It isn't facebook, it isn't twitter, it isn't tiktok. Also, it isn't decentralized in the new sense of the word.

The old Internet is not a page with flashing colors and dancing babies, you can still create those today. It isn't geocities, or its newer counterpart neocities either.

The old internet is people making their own website. It's old because people surfing on the web today think that having a website is a business decision. Before it was just cool to own one.

Re: The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

#220

Post by tata71 »

IncRnd wrote: post #120
tata71 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the obvious exception that...it's impossible to fork an entity like Theranos when they become sufficiently evil such that the community no longer believes in their direction.

Well, Theranos was a fork of existing, well-understood blood testing methodology. It was a house of cards built out of lies and falsehoods in order to enrich the founder and associates. Exactly like crypto often is.

"www companies are just a way for VCs to make money faster. "
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