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Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

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Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#51

Post by egypturnash »

antocv wrote: post #3
eterm wrote: post #2

It hurts to read this. How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer? Was it just the realities of money, that an end user would rather pay a tiny fraction of the real cost of being truly on line and pay instead with their freedom? We used to laugh at AOLers because they weren't experiencing the real internet, because they sold themselves out to an online service. Are today's ISPs with their fi…

The masses. We lost because of the great masses, the eternal october but on a much major scale. The same people that still watch TV and who become numb from their everyday medium to low-wage work, all those who are fighting against each other to climb the ladder just a tiny amount up. See the original internet users were scientists, officers, business people, those early adopters who have the resources and curiosity…

> Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment.

Did you ever hang out in a computer lab full of people busily attaining a PhD in muds? There were a hell of a lot of people who used the net as a toy, even back in the text-only days.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#52

Post by romaniv »

crusso wrote: post #46
romaniv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would postulate that if Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook went permanently offline tomorrow, absolutely nothing of significance would change either online or in the society. People would still find ways to do the same things, maybe even better ways. The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched. If anything, your list shows how centralized the In…

The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more. I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming env…

A lot of people drive GM cars to work, universities and shops. Your argument is similar to saying that without GM every one of them would be jobless, uneducated and could buy nothing. I.e. you conflating the possibility of doing something via a service with the service being the only outlet for doing that.

Internet of the 90s created a lot of possibilities that simply didn't exist before. Services of the 2000s mostly centralized and commercialized already existing trends. Of all the brands in your list, I would say Skype is the only one that profoundly changed something.

Also, I still stand by my statement that if the things I named disappeared tomorrow, the world would move on unscathed.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#53

Post by crusso »

eksith wrote: post #48
crusso wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money came into the picture. You have it completely backwards. I "discovered" the Internet in 1988 when I got a job in the IT department of the University I attended. I LOVED it. I transferred files, participated a lot in news groups, played MUDs, made friends in Europe... it was wonderful. When I graduated a few years later, I had to kiss the Internet goodbye. Without attending a major University that poured tons of…

Perhaps I should clarify. When money came into the picture, small-time ISPs and countless dial-up providers (many who offered some short time free) were popping up everywhere. They were quickly gobbled up or mismanaged to the ground as time went on and what remained was far from the competition (the more equal peers concept) as now only handful of companies control access to the world. Your university was likely conn…

Commercialization isn't killing the internet. Monopolization is.

At the end of the day, I look at the way that entrepreneurs like those on HN are able to exploit the Internet. With a laughably small investment in infrastructure and connectivity, a lone developer can spin up the "next big thing" in the cloud.

So sure, the structure of the Internet has changed and in SOME ways it may look like some major consolidation has happened. But in other ways, the diversity of connectivity options has exploded which more than balances out some corporate consolidation in the ISP space.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#54

Post by snori74 »

There's some wonderful lines in here, I particularly liked:

Planning has never seemed to have much to do with the seething, fungal development of the Internet...

And this one:

Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for the savage UNIX interface of TCP/IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in user-friendliness...

Notice how www/web isn't mentioned? It existed, but even when the first graphical browser came out (that same year), it wasn't clear what the point was - like many, I was on a 2400 Baud modem so every picture or graphic on a page would take 5 - 10 minutes to "come down the wire".

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#55

Post by marvin »

seiji wrote: post #24
jstalin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before, any information is at our fingertips, anyone who wants to create a web site is free to do so and post whatever they want (except maybe in China), commerce is available to the individual on a global basis, etc etc. Whining about the "go…

Billions of people are connected to each other like never before All controlled by about 5 corporations at the top.

This is hyperbole. Yes, there is a small number of large corporations which have a lot of users. But the infrastructure of the Internet is still there, and is largely as unregulated as it ever was. It's just that it has become less visible in the enormous mass of people who use the internet in a "simpler" way.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#56

Post by crusso »

romaniv wrote: post #52
crusso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more. I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming env…

A lot of people drive GM cars to work, universities and shops. Your argument is similar to saying that without GM every one of them would be jobless, uneducated and could buy nothing. I.e. you conflating the possibility of doing something via a service with the service being the only outlet for doing that. Internet of the 90s created a lot of possibilities that simply didn't exist before. Services of the 2000s mostly…

the world would move on unscathed

That clause is as true and unprovable for most anything you would put in front of it, depending upon your definition of "unscathed".

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#57

Post by VMG »

romaniv wrote: post #26
VMG wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The internet has been a great success for the masses: Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, Facebook all bring an immeasurable benefit to it's users. Of course not everything is perfect, but I much rather have today's internet than the internet of 1993

I would postulate that if Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook went permanently offline tomorrow, absolutely nothing of significance would change either online or in the society. People would still find ways to do the same things, maybe even better ways. The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched. If anything, your list shows how centralized the In…

> I would postulate that if Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook went permanently offline tomorrow, absolutely nothing of significance would change either online or in the society.

That is insane. On the other hand, if you shut down 1993 internet, nobody would have noticed.

> If anything, your list shows how centralized the Internet has become. After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services.

That's the natural evolution of every technology - I can imagine you yearning for the day when steam power and electricity wasn't commercialized and was a noble endeavor of hobbyists.

But I'll translate for you: I am talking about wiki software, multimedia streaming technology, social media and search engines, which you conveniently omitted.

Yes, these things are expensive, so they become centralized and commercialized. The world is still better for it.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#58

Post by coldtea »

mseebach wrote: post #43
coldtea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before And why is that a good thing in itself? Easy access to anybody else? Ever stopped to think what kind of other side-effects that ability could have?

I can come up with a number of reasons it would be bad, but none that doesn't make me sound like a rabid totalitarian.

Actually if you were a rabid totalitarian, easy access to everyone would be the greatest gift you could ask for. Especially working towards building some large empire...

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#59

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

The Internet is the multiplier of many huge economic forces. Some that come to mind:

- Productivity of a single worker: Izya, a mechanical engineering friend, used to spend hours in the engineering library trying to find the right part among hundreds of component catalogs. He now spends about 10 minutes browsing the web, on his smart phone, during lunch, at the local sandwich shop.

- Scale of an enterprise: Wal-Mart, Amazon and all companies of similar scale are effectively IT companies. What they actually sell is simply a side-effect of their IT operations. It is mind boggling to try to imagine the infrastructure and logistics involved in selling $1,300,000,000 worth of consumer goods per day.

- Return on Investment: Even the oil barons would be green with envy at an Instagram, or Twitter or Facebook and the absurdly low amount up front capital paid in to establish these business.

The Internet has changed everything. All of us, from governments to CEOs to grandmothers will spend our lives running to keep up with it.

Re: Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993)

#60

Post by anoncow »

adventured wrote: post #50
anoncow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you give examples for the latter?

Arguably the largest demand for consumer bandwidth over the first decade of the Web's existence was porn. From about 1996 forward (Quake), gaming has also helped move the needle. These days sites like Xvideos, Pornhub etc are monsters when it comes to bandwidth consumption, and there are dozens of major streaming porn sites. That constant bandwidth demand has been a great catalyst in terms of encouraging ever faster…

>Facebook had intentionally built-in sex appeal aspects to it

Do you mean the relationship status part? Interesting point.

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