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Was everyone stupid back then?

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Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#111

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I'll take the apparently unpopular opinion, that it kind of did work like that, and the internet has accelerated our progress into some kind of future Star Trek utopia (hopefully skipping the 2026-2053 nuclear war that they have in their universe).

I don't know how you'd support or discredit such a view but I generally feel like the free flow of information has been overall positive.

Not uniformly so, but even the bad stuff say Nazis, was already there and mostly brought into the sunlight.

I'm reminded of something I saw on the internet long ago, which compared a Time magazine piece about "life in Iran" which was all black and white photos of war murals, and contemporary Flickr photos from Iran, which was just normal people stuff, in color.

Can't find it now, but here's a conversation on Flickr in 2007 that kind of sums up the same thing of "Iranians are normal people, like us", "I know, I'm Iranian":

https://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/discuss/7215761559...

And here's someone who made a Firefox extension around the same time to work around the attempts to block flickr:

https://advox.globalvoices.org/2007/02/14/iran-flickr-users-...

Iran isn't currently some Disneyland, but would it be better or worse without the internet? I vaguely feel there's been a positive impact.

I know it was fashionable to get excited about the Arab Spring and then fashionable to be cynical about it all, but I feel like in one of those hype cycle things, the long term impact is being understimated, even as some overestimated the short term impact.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#112

Post by thefz »

0x445442 wrote: post #81
endymi0n wrote: post #46

Looking back, I guess the main point of why the early internet was so special wasn‘t because of cool new communications technology, but because of the self selection. In order to use BBSes or the early Internet, by definition you had to be above average curious, smart, rich, young (late night dialup tarrifs) and/or based in academia, as well as having a volunteering/cooperating mindset. We just managed to keep the ot…

I’m not sure if this comment is a jab at the unwashed masses but you did leave out another group, corporations. BBS Sysops, and people that were putting up web sites in the mid 90s weren’t doing it for money. It wasn’t until the cult of money got involved and turned the internet into a giant direct marketing platform that things began to get really bad.

Good point, I sometimes get caught in the "ah, the internet back then" fallacy but what really has driven it down in the mud was the entry of corporations, not the people involved.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#114

Post by stemlord »

jfengel wrote: post #16

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.” Douglas Adams thought he was joking.

I'm repeatedly surprised at how many people dont seem to get that most scifi is deliberately a reflection of issues that already exist in our current day society.

Like that is what makes the jokes in hitchhikers guide funny, and why the matrix is one of the most poignant narratives in pop culture... black mirror is real life taken to poetic extremes, it's not a coincidence that zuck's metaverse gives off "black mirror vibes", that is the specific intention of black mirror

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#115

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ktwbc wrote: post #4

This actually reminds me of a quote in the book The Victorian Internet about the development of the telegraph. Part of the push of the first undersea cable to connect the US and European countries was a belief that with more instant communication there would be no misunderstandings and therefore no more wars. So this belief has been going on a long time.

I can't remember if it was that book, or another that referenced it, but the fame of "Florence Nightingale" has been linked to the use of the telegraph to bring back news from a previous war in Crimea:

> I also gain a sense that the time was ripe for change to the nursing profession – and that Florence Nightingale sparked a revolution in health care that was waiting to happen (prior to the Crimea, British women had not served in military hospitals). Newspapers and improved communication raised public awareness of the conditions of wounded soldiers in Crimea, and the nursing profession was gradually becoming more respected. But the museum also leaves the impression that it was more than just a case of her being in the right place at the right time. Her combination of intellect, fierce sense of vocation (fuelled by her religious faith), and her well-connected family background, meant perhaps that only Florence Nightingale could have shaped the nursing profession so effectively in that era.

The book where I read about this linked it to e.g. photos and videos from Vietnam affecting US public perception of the conflict and generally the better and rawer the communications from the war, the better it gives you an honest angle on it compared with the official propaganda.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#116

Post by lamontcg »

karmakaze wrote: post #89
0x445442 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if this comment is a jab at the unwashed masses but you did leave out another group, corporations. BBS Sysops, and people that were putting up web sites in the mid 90s weren’t doing it for money. It wasn’t until the cult of money got involved and turned the internet into a giant direct marketing platform that things began to get really bad.

I remember when corporations started showing up. They were mostly ignored. It wasn't until mainstream adoption outweighed the early adopter culture that things really started going downhill and combined with corporations accelerated.

Corporations showed up but it was all running over the NSF backbone so commercial use was suppressed, and "sysops" would e.g. immediately ban users for e-mail spam since they were worried about losing their upstream (and transitively back up to the backbone).

I can't find the Bills that were passed now to commercialize the Internet and get off of NSFnet but that was early in the Clinton-Gore administration.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#117

Post by lamontcg »

karmakaze wrote: post #98
0x445442 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess it’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing but corporations brought centralized servers. Of course we’re discussing a topic on a centralized server now but PG is not making any money from it.

I'm trying to remember when and infer why things got so consumer-y. Replaying it in my mind, there was Slashdot, Reddit which were fine. I think Digg was a downstep. Even Facebook was great at the start. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say it's about shallow consumption/interactions that kill the signal/noise. Like posting a picture/video with a caption, having it go viral with upvotes/reposts.

It happened right about the time of Canter and Siegel and the September that never ended.

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#118

Post by Shared404 »

lob_it wrote: post #113
Shared404 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm having a hard time parsing this, almost to the point of wondering if you're running a natural language model for these comments.

Quoted post unavailable.

Hm. Well, the ability to drop out convuluted metaphors and poor hints towards a bigger idea is a poor proxy for conversation.

Could you elaborate?

Re: Was everyone stupid back then?

#120

Post by karmakaze »

lamontcg wrote: post #117
karmakaze wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to remember when and infer why things got so consumer-y. Replaying it in my mind, there was Slashdot, Reddit which were fine. I think Digg was a downstep. Even Facebook was great at the start. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say it's about shallow consumption/interactions that kill the signal/noise. Like posting a picture/video with a caption, having it go viral with upvotes/reposts.

It happened right about the time of Canter and Siegel and the September that never ended.

That was for spam. I was thinking of regular user posts that are low quality in the way HN tries to avoid.

Of course that wouldn't have happened until there was a large general population on Usenet--and the dates do check out.

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