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I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

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Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#81

Post by gogopuppygogo »

ethbr0 wrote: post #57
zubspace wrote: post #40

I just watched Inside [1], where Bo Burnham creates a wonderful, funny, sad and thought-provoking "Special" about our internet culture. Highly recommended. This is one of my favourite songs now: [2] It's a bit crazy when I think about how different our generations grow up and it makes me a bit sad that our children will have a completely different understanding of what the internet is. For me it was a place of wonder…

If I had to distill four decades of "mass Internet" transformation into one phrase: Independent creator culture (1980-2000), converted into mass consumer culture (2000-2010), and then back into taxed creator culture within walled ecosystems (2010-2020).

That timeline you described doesn’t align with the events of eternal September: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#82

Post by okamiueru »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #55
okamiueru wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 1. When you say "no longer trivial", I would point out that if it isn't now, then it surely never was? Not using a framework (by which I assume you mean the likes of wordpress or squarespace) is still as much possible today as it ever was. And, the knowledge on how to do so is ever more accessible. I can see your point that when provided with easy ways to do things, you are limited to design decisions and c…

I had a friend with zero programming experience who put up a simple webpage for her small business in 1995 with just a text editor and some photos. Yes, it was much simpler. And it was encouraged, because most ISPs offered free web page hosting - including a free URL, and email - with an access account. Wordpress is a nightmare in comparison. And a fully engineered blog stack is far beyond the reach of most users. Yo…

Isn't the anecdote only valid if your friend would somehow be unable to do the same if it were today?

I do get the sentiment that is expressed, but I also think it is wrong. The possibility to create, and the resources with which to do so is astronomically better than it was growing up. Imagine having access to YouTube and the thousands of excellent tutors. Just because convenience can lead to mediocrity, doesn't excuse it.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#84

Post by pixl97 »

fabbari wrote: post #34

I miss text. It seems now that whenever I search for 'how to do X?' there is a lot of video results for sometimes very trivial things. A 10 minutes video with the usual 'subscribe and hit the bell icon', a word from the sponsor, a long winded introduction and then "click on menu, then click on this item, then select the size".

Say "thank you Google" for this one. This is how they decided to monetize the internet.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#85

Post by ipython »

mrtksn wrote: post #31
markus_zhang wrote: post #17

I actually enjoy today's Internet much more. I'll lay out the reasons: 1) Easy access to many high quality contents. For example HN is a good platform for accessing new knowledge. Note that I say "access", not "learn". Reading HN sometimes give people the false impression that they are learning new knowledge, which usually is not the case. I treat HN as a platform to get a peek at certain new knowledge, but reading b…

> Easy access to many high quality contents. On the contrary, I would argue that the content quality is drastically lower because of optimisation for revenue and much less purer motivations. The video quality is really much much better though. Original video scene is great as the business side of the things is a solved problem. Yet again, it suffers from optimisation for advertisers as less and less things are kosher…

I don’t know about the content argument. Yes it’s true that there is a lot of low quality content out there. And that low quality content drowns out the good stuff. But there are some absolute gems out there - things that didn’t exist 20+ years ago. Khan academy for example is a treasure of amazing free content.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#86

Post by delecti »

ethbr0 wrote: post #57
zubspace wrote: post #40

I just watched Inside [1], where Bo Burnham creates a wonderful, funny, sad and thought-provoking "Special" about our internet culture. Highly recommended. This is one of my favourite songs now: [2] It's a bit crazy when I think about how different our generations grow up and it makes me a bit sad that our children will have a completely different understanding of what the internet is. For me it was a place of wonder…

If I had to distill four decades of "mass Internet" transformation into one phrase: Independent creator culture (1980-2000), converted into mass consumer culture (2000-2010), and then back into taxed creator culture within walled ecosystems (2010-2020).

I think all of that independent creator culture is still out there, there's just also the mass consumer culture and walled ecosystems on top. It's a relatively insignificant proportion of things now, but big networks seem to be what most people are looking for.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#87

Post by ethbr0 »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #81
ethbr0 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to distill four decades of "mass Internet" transformation into one phrase: Independent creator culture (1980-2000), converted into mass consumer culture (2000-2010), and then back into taxed creator culture within walled ecosystems (2010-2020).

That timeline you described doesn’t align with the events of eternal September: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Mass effect lags individual instance, and ranges are general.

F.ex. YouTube started in 2005, but from my memory the first years were primarily sharing copyrighted commercial material, before they cracked down on that and leaned into monetizing and taxing organic content

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#88

Post by Growling_owl »

Zak wrote: post #70
mrtksn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy access to many high quality contents. On the contrary, I would argue that the content quality is drastically lower because of optimisation for revenue and much less purer motivations. The video quality is really much much better though. Original video scene is great as the business side of the things is a solved problem. Yet again, it suffers from optimisation for advertisers as less and less things are kosher…

> On the contrary, I would argue that the content quality is drastically lower because of optimisation for revenue and much less purer motivations. I think the signal to noise ratio has decreased, but that doesn't mean there's less signal; there's just a lot more noise.

the Internet is now being used by 4 billions people, so it basically mimics humanity

Back in the 80s and 90s you were cherry picking the elite and the intellectuals, the internet of back then was never going to be representative sample of humanity

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#89

Post by boboche »

Remember the “back in my days” talk about some old stuff that you didn’t know or fully care about, or in some rare cases sparked some curiosity? Time is brutal and some of us have become that old dude. Scary. Cycle of life and evolution vs. nostalgia I guess.

I’m cuttently soldering a rs-232 to wifi modem (https://subethasoftware.com/2018/02/28/wire-up-your-own-rs-2...) to get my amigas back online. Pimiga is nice but too far from that 1:1 experience. Lots of telnet BBS out there.

Re: I Miss the Old Internet (2019)

#90

Post by kasey_junk »

barney54 wrote: post #60

This sentiment of missing an older internet is one reason like like Hacker News. Slash dot was great in the day. Digg was so great in the day. Then the early days of Reddit were great. I’ve been her for over ten years and Hacker News is still good. So thank you to the team that runs Hacker News and everyone who comments for making it a good place to come to.

Fwiw I’m old enough to remember people deriding the internet for replacing more pure bbs’ and newsgroups with flashy websites like /. and digg.
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