As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

The internet in Dec 1991 was already the largest computer network in the world according to some author back then. Certainly it was very very big.

Let me describe what ads or ad-like things there were.

Companies would announce job openings. These announcements were restricted to a few newsgroups such as ba.jobs and could not announce independent contractor openings: while it was okay to announce an opening for an employee (W2) or for an individual to announce his availability for employment, it was against the rules for a company to announce an opening for an independent contractor (1099) or for an independent contractor to announce his availability for work -- that was considered too much like commercial activity and was kept off the internet, which had almost no rules in the early 1990s, but one clear rule, consistently enforced, was, no commercial activity.

The job announcements stayed nicely contained (namely, restricted to newsgroups whose names ended in ".jobs") such that a person wouldn't encounter them unless they went looking for them. What did not stay nicely contained were announcements of academic conferences. When I was reading comp.lang.lisp, I could not avoid encountering announcements for many academic conferences on various programming-related topics even if they weren't about Lisp. And these announcements were repeated often (weekly or even more frequently).

But as far as anything ad-like, job announcements and conference announcements are all I can remember, and again only the conference announcements were obtrusive.

I heard that the proprietary online services like Compuserve and Prodigy had successfully argued in Washington that it was unfair for private enterprises to have to compete with a government-subsidized service (namely, the internet) and extracted a commitment from Washington that any commercial activity would be kept off the internet.

Again, there were almost no rules on the internet of 1991 and earlier. Tim Berners Lee for example did not need to get anyone's permission to start the web: he just wrote a web client, stood up the first web server and announced their availability. People acted like complete assholes on Usenet, and there was no way to rein them in. Pedophiles openly exchanged practical advice on how to target and exploit children on alt.sex.pedophilia. But one clear rule was no commercial activity, e.g., no selling, no trading and certainly no advertising.

It really isn’t doing any of that, though. When AI gets it wrong, that person needs to understand why it is wrong, and without that upfront knowledge or skill of reasoning, it’s much less direct to actually build something in the correct ways.

As I approached 30 I felt what I now understand as anxiety. Nothing crazy but you wake up one day, you're a year old, you take stock of your life and see what you've accomplished. I chased credentials and new jobs, did well but not yet able to retire. Old relationships grew strained and new ones are hard to form. Etc. I was definitely more afraid of death than you are.

I stumbled into children. Met my wife, didn't overthink things and decided to marry her after several years of courtship. She wanted children so I went along with it.

After they were born, the anxiety went away entirely. I just watch them grow older. It might change after their grown but hopefully they'll have children and I'll be able to repeat the process (my parents sure have).

To answer your question, I don't see a way I could have been fulfilled without children. It brings a lot with it as well. Before children the worst thing that could happen to me is dying. After kids you realize there's a whole world of potential pain and sorrow that is now before you. You're also constantly reminded that every kid is a roll of the dice when you see others in a similar spot as you have children with health or behavioral issues. It's terrifying.

But for me life shouldn't be all pleasure. I've always liked exercise because it does feel terrible while you're doing it. But at least you're doing something. I feel that way about children.