By the time I started using the internet around 1995 businesses definitely had a presence. But the web felt far more decentralized, open, and laissez-faire. It

By the time I started using the internet around 1995 businesses definitely had a presence. But the web felt far more decentralized, open, and laissez-faire. It was a movement and like any new movement it just felt so happening. Today, outside of a random tech blog, it feels like I go to the same sites over and over again. In the mid-nineties if you wanted to talk about your favorite band, you'd cobble together a site in something like tripod, geocities, or even expages. Then link to other slapdash fan pages. Today you go to a subreddit or setup a medium blog. Want to chat? Then you'd go onto IRC, ICQ (remember that?) or a random website running a Java Applet. Today its slack. Economies of scale always win. We lose something beautiful in the process, gaining only nostalgia for something we'll never get back. I actually write about this a bit in a book I'm slowly writing, Wanking in Hostels, https://pastebin.com/u/drifterzero https://pastebin.com/u/drifterzero