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How to make the internet small again

raptitude.com

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Re: How to make the internet small again

#41

Post by BeFlatXIII »

Jaruzel wrote: post #37

Part of what the author ignores here, is the always-on expectation of you by other users. If they send you a WhatsApp message, and you don't reply within minutes, or your 'last seen' timestamp is hours/days ago... they'll panic, convinced that you've falling down a ravine or something. For those thinking of trying this experiment, I would recommend briefing your whole social circle beforehand.

I've unintentionally run this experiment my entire adult life. I'm an unreliable responder and people who message me already know that. Still, I've filtered out (intentionally or otherwise) people who expect prompt responses to low-criticality chats.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#42

Post by BeFlatXIII »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #39
deergomoo wrote: post #14

“The internet was small compared to your real life, which was something that happened offline.” Perhaps the author is more extroverted than me (almost certainly, actually), but I find this interesting. What attracted me to the internet as a kid in the early 2000s was just how huge it was even then. Sure, you had to go looking for stuff rather than having it shovelled in front of you en masse, but there was such an en…

To me the internet felt bigger in the early 2000s than today. I went to more individual web sites than I do now, though they had less on them, and there was more diversity in how individual sites looked than today.

I agree with you. Instead of being four sites incessantly reposting from the other three, it was an adventure to type in random dictionary words and append .com just to see what lay on the other end. Perhaps even .net if you felt adventurous.

These days, doing that gives the impression that the only options for random surfing are porn, SaaS businesses, and ad-filled parking pages. The porn and parking pages have always been with us: it's the directly commercial nature of the remains that soured me from surfing like I did in middle school.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#43

Post by mattlondon »

foxfluff wrote: post #33
mattlondon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reluctant to get involved with Gemini initially - it seemed like Gopher had already existed and could benefit from a revival, rather than someone creating something new (after all, Gopher+ actually offers some good possibilities for doing more modern things, and TLS support is now ubiquitous in gopher even if not officially in the spec) Upon reading some more about Gemini though - especially solderpunk's "ponde…

> E.g. there was a client (I forget the details - sorry) that introduced the concept of a unicode "favicon" and a few people lost their shit about it. Here's the whole story: https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19... I wish the ML archive linked down there weren't dead, sigh.

It is on archive.org - https://web.archive.org/web/20210513001351/lists.orbitalfox....

Re: How to make the internet small again

#44

Post by mmphosis »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #17
orang2tang wrote: post #15

I bought an iBook G4 1.33ghz single-core with 512mb of RAM and 40gb spinning disk to use as my daily driver. It's perfect for reading Wikipedia and other text-based sites and I just found a really good Bible program specifically made for OSX 10.4. I feel very focused as I don't get side-tracked by YouTube because I can't run it! I almost never program outside of work unless I have an idea for something so I put my mo…

How do you get a modern browser on Tiger these days? As far as I know TenFourFox is no longer maintained and nobody forked it either.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/interwebppc-browser-a-r...

Re: How to make the internet small again

#45

Post by foxfluff »

mattlondon wrote: post #43
foxfluff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E.g. there was a client (I forget the details - sorry) that introduced the concept of a unicode "favicon" and a few people lost their shit about it. Here's the whole story: https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19... I wish the ML archive linked down there weren't dead, sigh.

It is on archive.org - https://web.archive.org/web/20210513001351/lists.orbitalfox....

Yes, that message is, but the rest of the thread isn't.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#46

Post by zozbot234 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #40
zozbot234 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML5 could easily be that specification. Clients could be set to ignore not just JavaScript but even CSS automatically (this can easily be done in current Firefox!), and a separate social mechanism could be used to certify sites as "working properly" when doing this. This would be a meaningful way to make "Gemini-equivalent" near mainstream, in a way that Gemini itself will likely never be.

I don't disagree that this is one approach, but I don't think we can wholly rely on end users to do this. If small site owners start using this defined 'lite' specification with some sort of visual cue (bring back those little GIFs! 'Proudly built as "WebLite"') we may be able to start a grass roots movement.

Yes, "works properly when ignoring CSS" could just be used as a convenient objective standard for "lite", that obviates the need for an incompatible spec altogether.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#47

Post by orang2tang »

mmphosis wrote: post #44
BoxOfRain wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get a modern browser on Tiger these days? As far as I know TenFourFox is no longer maintained and nobody forked it either.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/interwebppc-browser-a-r...

Thanks for this!

Re: How to make the internet small again

#49

Post by anthk »

foxfluff wrote: post #34
7thaccount wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for linking to this. It looks like something I've been looking for if I understand it properly. It would be neat to have a barebones OS running on a tiny computer that you could access a simplified internet.

I'm hoping I could find a community interested in.. I don't want to say exactly "low tech" computing but I guess the idea is pretty close. Cheap microcontrollers today are incredibly powerful.

Alpine Linux, sacc and cgnml as Gopher/Gemini clients. CWM+Urxvt as the only X interface, because Gemini uses Unicode and the framebuffer support is not that complete. Alpine should be installed with a diskless/RAM mode, so there are no FS changes commited unless you do an "lbu commit -d".

Once you set up sacc, cgnml, and nsxiv for pictures, (and maybe moc for music) there's nothing much more to save.

On hw basis, maybe an RPI B+ with a tiny display. Done.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#50

Post by anthk »

mro_name wrote: post #2

The Low-Tech-Magazine proposes a speed limit to the internet: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/can-the-internet-r... High speed wipes out distances and dramatically increases pressure. Both in real (topology!) and cyber.

Gemini and Gopher/Usenet/IRC would perfectly work under "dataless" phone connections where the speed is capped to 128k. I tried it and it worked as fast as a fiber connection.
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