6 ms·

Dial-up connection, ICQ, and 10mb files left to be downloaded through the night were my connection to the world. I so badly wanted that future of the Internet,

Dial-up connection, ICQ, and 10mb files left to be downloaded through the night were my connection to the world. I so badly wanted that future of the Internet, but somehow we ended up in a place where corporations ate it all. Is it nostalgia, or is there something more? Who knows at this point. I’m 30.

JohnMakin 2y ago
I’m not that much crazy older than you, but I do remember well being a teenager at the peak of the dotcom craze, being a heavy internet user, and even back then having a vague feeling that the ad riddled, desperately monetized (and shitty) websites built on the back of mostly investment capital run amok felt a little shitty as an end user. It’s hazy now and lost to time (the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now) but i vividly remember pages that became harder and harder to navigate because of invasive ads, and sites that’d somehow embed malware on your computer that’d spam you with weird porn popups when your parents used the machine - it all feels vaguely similar to now, albeit much sleeker. Adware in my opinion is bordering on malware to the point I find the definitions indistinguishable. It collapsed then for good reason, and IMHO similar conditions as to now. I don’t want to live through that as a fully grown adult with a tech career now, and it worries me a lot. What arose from the ashes of that bubble event became great so maybe a reset is needed, but for me personally, it’d be a disaster.
- echelon_musk 2y ago
  > the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now The internet has existed for longer than the web which is already 30 yrs at this point. Not sure I catch your point that it's 10 yrs old.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    They're talking about a very similar idea as the article, that the early internet is disappearing as everyone moves to new stuff.
- RGamma 2y ago
  > it’s like ~10 years old at most Wikipedia is from 2001, Archive from 1996. IRC still exists as do retro games or the demo scene. There's still some of that good stuff around, but you can't really imagine it being founded today, at least not with the same cultural enthusiasm. Such an optimistic time...
G3rn0ti 2y ago
> I so badly wanted that future of the Internet, but somehow we ended up in a place where corporations ate it all. The high bandwidths we got today are exactly the result of a full commercialization of the Internet. If there was no money to earn here, we would still be stuck with dial-up connections and had no YouTube and Netflix. I understand that advertisements and online tracking suck but it’s the result of consumers not willing to pay a penny for many online services. But I think that’s already changing with all those subscription models and SaaS businesses out there.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  Blaming consumers for the state of things and for “not spending money” is a common refrain, and honestly is gaslighting and revisionist. The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now, which is to the point of total degradation of the core service itself - this is not the cause of consumers, but rather the current mindset of the wall street landscape. As far as “not willing to pay for it” what do you call subscription models of popular language models like chatGPT? I would pay an embarrassing amount for a google that worked like google did 10 years ago. That isn’t my fault that product doesn’t exist anymore, the demand is there. This angry tone isn’t directed at you, I just find it so frustrating that people believe it’s such a binary choice. Google had the literal monopoly on tech talent and knowledge for 20 years and decided to divert that into the most cannibalistic and predatory business model around. Can you imagine had they directed the same efforts to making an actual competitor to AWS? I am speaking as a career cloud infra guy and business owner running on cloud - as much as I hate MS products I’d sooner migrate to azure than ever spend a penny on a google cloud product for anything more critical than running the office coffee maker. That, I think, was a tremendously bad decision for the internet, and the decision absolutely was not binary. Make a good product people find useful and people pay for it. That’s how the market has worked for all of human history, there’s nothing different about the internet.
  - G3rn0ti 2y ago
    > The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now What time period are you even talking about? In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. The internet only started growing exponentially with commercial services appearing in the late nineties. This was the time when people started to demand high speed Internet connections (ASDL) and were willing to pay for that. But this was not the case for its services. Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. IMHO it is your view on the Internet history that is being "revisionist" and "gaslighting". Take this from sb who had his private Internet access as early as 1998.
dmead 2y ago
How old were you? I'm 41 and I also miss that stuff.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I'm in my very late 20s and I do miss this, too. I used MSN more than ICQ, however. I still use IRC just like I did when I was ~13 years old, without much knowledge of English.
- kazcaptain 2y ago
  I was a child really so it’s not simple to differentiate between nostalgia and “real” world for me.
cutthegrass2 2y ago
I've been thinking about this too, perhaps it's my age (43) and the fact I vividly remember earlier times. If I were to pick an inflection point, a point at which the internet started going to shit, i'd say it was around 07/08 with the birth of the iPhone and Appstore. That's when "pay to publish" really started to take off.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > If I were to pick an inflection point, a point at which the internet started going to shit, i'd say it was around 07/08 with the birth of the iPhone and Appstore. That's when "pay to publish" really started to take off. That's very plausible. I additionally want to add that before the iPhone, having a locked-down device where the vendor decides which app(lication)s you are allowed to install caused huge outcries and shitstorms. Example: Microsoft's initiatives for "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base" (formerly Palladium) [1] and attempting to enforce a TPM on computers (keyword: trusted computing). When the iPhone came out, this all suddenly became perfectly accepted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...
  - user3939382 2y ago
    I don’t know if Palm was technically a walled garden, I’m guessing you could load from wherever, but practically it was and I don’t think anyone had a problem with it. Not sure if it’s a counterpoint but something to consider.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > I don’t know if Palm was technically a walled garden, I’m guessing you could load from wherever, but practically it was According to this Reddit thread [1], you could easily install applications to a Palm from a memory stick. Additionally, I am not aware that Palm applications needed to be signed by the device producer (i.e. the device producer could not decide which applications are allowed vs forbidden on the device). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/tmvm9z/is_there_a_way_to_install_palm_apps_from_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/tmvm9z/is_there_a_way...

JohnMakin 2y ago

I’m not that much crazy older than you, but I do remember well being a teenager at the peak of the dotcom craze, being a heavy internet user, and even back then having a vague feeling that the ad riddled, desperately monetized (and shitty) websites built on the back of mostly investment capital run amok felt a little shitty as an end user. It’s hazy now and lost to time (the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now) but i vividly remember pages that became harder and harder to navigate because of invasive ads, and sites that’d somehow embed malware on your computer that’d spam you with weird porn popups when your parents used the machine - it all feels vaguely similar to now, albeit much sleeker. Adware in my opinion is bordering on malware to the point I find the definitions indistinguishable. It collapsed then for good reason, and IMHO similar conditions as to now. I don’t want to live through that as a fully grown adult with a tech career now, and it worries me a lot. What arose from the ashes of that bubble event became great so maybe a reset is needed, but for me personally, it’d be a disaster.

echelon_musk 2y ago
> the internet is not actually forever it’s like ~10 years old at most now The internet has existed for longer than the web which is already 30 yrs at this point. Not sure I catch your point that it's 10 yrs old.
- Izkata 2y ago
  They're talking about a very similar idea as the article, that the early internet is disappearing as everyone moves to new stuff.
RGamma 2y ago
> it’s like ~10 years old at most Wikipedia is from 2001, Archive from 1996. IRC still exists as do retro games or the demo scene. There's still some of that good stuff around, but you can't really imagine it being founded today, at least not with the same cultural enthusiasm. Such an optimistic time...

G3rn0ti 2y ago

> I so badly wanted that future of the Internet, but somehow we ended up in a place where corporations ate it all. The high bandwidths we got today are exactly the result of a full commercialization of the Internet. If there was no money to earn here, we would still be stuck with dial-up connections and had no YouTube and Netflix. I understand that advertisements and online tracking suck but it’s the result of consumers not willing to pay a penny for many online services. But I think that’s already changing with all those subscription models and SaaS businesses out there.

JohnMakin 2y ago
Blaming consumers for the state of things and for “not spending money” is a common refrain, and honestly is gaslighting and revisionist. The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now, which is to the point of total degradation of the core service itself - this is not the cause of consumers, but rather the current mindset of the wall street landscape. As far as “not willing to pay for it” what do you call subscription models of popular language models like chatGPT? I would pay an embarrassing amount for a google that worked like google did 10 years ago. That isn’t my fault that product doesn’t exist anymore, the demand is there. This angry tone isn’t directed at you, I just find it so frustrating that people believe it’s such a binary choice. Google had the literal monopoly on tech talent and knowledge for 20 years and decided to divert that into the most cannibalistic and predatory business model around. Can you imagine had they directed the same efforts to making an actual competitor to AWS? I am speaking as a career cloud infra guy and business owner running on cloud - as much as I hate MS products I’d sooner migrate to azure than ever spend a penny on a google cloud product for anything more critical than running the office coffee maker. That, I think, was a tremendously bad decision for the internet, and the decision absolutely was not binary. Make a good product people find useful and people pay for it. That’s how the market has worked for all of human history, there’s nothing different about the internet.
- G3rn0ti 2y ago
  > The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now What time period are you even talking about? In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. The internet only started growing exponentially with commercial services appearing in the late nineties. This was the time when people started to demand high speed Internet connections (ASDL) and were willing to pay for that. But this was not the case for its services. Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. IMHO it is your view on the Internet history that is being "revisionist" and "gaslighting". Take this from sb who had his private Internet access as early as 1998.

dmead 2y ago

How old were you? I'm 41 and I also miss that stuff.

johnisgood 2y ago
I'm in my very late 20s and I do miss this, too. I used MSN more than ICQ, however. I still use IRC just like I did when I was ~13 years old, without much knowledge of English.
kazcaptain 2y ago
I was a child really so it’s not simple to differentiate between nostalgia and “real” world for me.

cutthegrass2 2y ago

I've been thinking about this too, perhaps it's my age (43) and the fact I vividly remember earlier times. If I were to pick an inflection point, a point at which the internet started going to shit, i'd say it was around 07/08 with the birth of the iPhone and Appstore. That's when "pay to publish" really started to take off.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> If I were to pick an inflection point, a point at which the internet started going to shit, i'd say it was around 07/08 with the birth of the iPhone and Appstore. That's when "pay to publish" really started to take off. That's very plausible. I additionally want to add that before the iPhone, having a locked-down device where the vendor decides which app(lication)s you are allowed to install caused huge outcries and shitstorms. Example: Microsoft's initiatives for "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base" (formerly Palladium) [1] and attempting to enforce a TPM on computers (keyword: trusted computing). When the iPhone came out, this all suddenly became perfectly accepted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...
- user3939382 2y ago
  I don’t know if Palm was technically a walled garden, I’m guessing you could load from wherever, but practically it was and I don’t think anyone had a problem with it. Not sure if it’s a counterpoint but something to consider.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > I don’t know if Palm was technically a walled garden, I’m guessing you could load from wherever, but practically it was According to this Reddit thread [1], you could easily install applications to a Palm from a memory stick. Additionally, I am not aware that Palm applications needed to be signed by the device producer (i.e. the device producer could not decide which applications are allowed vs forbidden on the device). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/tmvm9z/is_there_a_way_to_install_palm_apps_from_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Palm/comments/tmvm9z/is_there_a_way...