The old internet still exists, we're just distracted by commercial slopware.
Switching back to RSS and Linux made me a much happier person.
A retrospective of my time on the internet
61–70 of 317 posts
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#62The first time I accessed the internet (I was ~8) was at a computer school, where I learned LOGO and a bit of BASIC. The first website I ever visited was the Space Jam website. Great memories…
Oh, and the computer had a webcam, but we never managed to get it working with someone on the other end.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#63It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…
Yeah, but it does seem like there have been multiple distinct changes, rather than this just being an age-based phenomenon. I seem to be about a decade older than the OP, and I'd also say that the early '10s is when things got less fun. Although I dunno, I thought "web 2.0" was just hype (and thus bad) and that Facebook was ruining everything, and those were five to ten years before 2012. So maybe it's less of a specific year discontinuity in my mind than the article suggests.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#64Authors first problem is "Using MS Windows". Its now solidly an advert and spam vehicle for other Microsoft shit nobody wants (like the 63 different things named Copilot). Seriously, use Linux. It is better in almost every way, other than extreme rootkit based games.
Next, use Firefox or Iceweasel with Ublock Origin and a useragent changer. Disable the spammy shit, but there's less of it.
For phones, run Graphene. Hands down.
Focus on Fediverse applications. Twitter -> Mastodon. Instagram -> Pixelfed. Reddit -> Lemmy. YouTube -> Peertube. Various chat -> Matrix (but its not good). Various search engines -> SearXNG.
And old stuff still exists. IRC is still a thing. Gopher still exists.
You can also run your discord chats, Facebook, Instagram, etm. Just run them through a web browser, and never let them see any apps.
Its easy to be all defeatist and shouty-at-clouds, and 'back in the old days'. They'll never come again. Instead, its all our jobs to MAKE the current place friendly to us and ours.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#65It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…
Isn't that a bit elistist to say everything changed when more people joined? The point is not the consumers of the Internet but the producers are what changed it - primarily with advertising and walled gardens.
The new users stopped reading the FAQs. They stopped lurking. They wanted things spoonfed to them, so the producers started spoonfeeding. The modern walled-garden system is the ultimate result of that. Is it the fault of those users? Not in any moral sense, it's reasonable to want a more structured presentation. Things change.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#66This bit feels naive, in 2007:
> While there may have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable - they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics, users' fun, and curiosity.
2007 places us well into World of Warcraft territory. Online games were already a juggernaut and highly profitable.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#67It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…
I had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…
To me, "gamergate" - or I dunno, the "alt right" thing more broadly, it's hard for me to remember which thing begat which, or maybe I never knew - was when I first remember thinking "what's with all the nastiness?". I was on twitter back then, and it felt to me like some kind of flood gate opening.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#68It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…
Isn't that a bit elistist to say everything changed when more people joined? The point is not the consumers of the Internet but the producers are what changed it - primarily with advertising and walled gardens.
“Change” is just the state altering. It can be the producers and it can also be the consumers that alter that state.
The GP might be elitist with their view but it’s still just as valid opinion as the others shared.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…
I remember a lot of bad natured Usenet flame wars. I don’t think it’s worse now it’s just the volume got louder and things like reddit amplifying stupid to new lows. Easy enough to avoid. Facebook and LinkedIn I would consider novel compared to usenet but it’s hard to tell the fakeness and bots from each other, or from static. Again, easy to avoid.
Yes, what we remember is interesting, especially while reflecting on posts such as OPs. The Internet that I grew up with didn't have bots, neighbourhood gossipers, weaponised propaganda... we spurned people trying to sell stuff. My teenage Internet predated widespread use of email, so predated spam. Maybe my rose-coloured glasses remember a smaller number of real people and a demographic that was closer to my own.
Re: A retrospective of my time on the internet
#70It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to…
I had the same weird feeling reading the post. Where OP was 'living there' in 2007, I was building sophisticated apps with big teams to do things build commercial insurance systems. I don't know whether I built the things that OP missed about the old days, or paved over the things that he used as a child. If there is one thing I miss about the Internet that I grew up with, it is the trust and self-policing. We were o…
We did not all get along. I remember some incredible flamewars on echomail, certainly, and also on usenet.