5 ms·

“increment on May 11, 2015 [-] Yeah, ultimately I think the Internet today is a lot more open and a lot more beneficial to liberal society than any network was

by techer 7y ago

“increment on May 11, 2015 [-] Yeah, ultimately I think the Internet today is a lot more open and a lot more beneficial to liberal society than any network was in 1990. I understand why you gag at that, but, I can imagine much, much worse outcomes than we got.” How fast things change.

rcxdude 7y ago
Still true.
- headsoup 7y ago
  No it isn't
  - sombremesa 7y ago
    It is - compare the internet to the AppStore or the Play Store. The internet could've easily been something like that - a walled garden accessible only through proprietary clients, where you could only publish content through prescribed channels. Sure, people would've created open alternatives, but just like is the case with the AppStore alternatives today, those alternatives would languish for want of an audience.
    - bordercases 7y ago
      You don't need a commercial aggregator to deal with the problem of an audience. You just need a well-known aggregator. The mobile phone is seems like a good analogue of the walled garden model and unsurprisingly computers like Macs and Chromebooks show some of their roots there.
    - Aloha 7y ago
      It could have been AOL. The underlying power of the internet remains the ability to use it for virtually any application.
    - headsoup 7y ago
      I was only responding in kind to the above poster who provided no context for their answer... And context does matter, because in some places the internet is basically Facebook, which is certainly not open
  - dleslie 7y ago
    I don't want to go back to an archipelego of incompatible networks; at one point we were struggling to cross the WWW, BBS, CompuServ and AOL divides. It's different than the modern era of different and incompatible messenger software; at least Discord and Slack route packets on the same network.
coldtea 7y ago
>Yeah, ultimately I think the Internet today is a lot more open and a lot more beneficial to liberal society than any network was in 1990. Yes, but not from how it was in 1999.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
I still think the internet was a net good.

by techer 7y ago

rcxdude 7y ago

Still true.

headsoup 7y ago
No it isn't
- sombremesa 7y ago
  It is - compare the internet to the AppStore or the Play Store. The internet could've easily been something like that - a walled garden accessible only through proprietary clients, where you could only publish content through prescribed channels. Sure, people would've created open alternatives, but just like is the case with the AppStore alternatives today, those alternatives would languish for want of an audience.
  - bordercases 7y ago
    You don't need a commercial aggregator to deal with the problem of an audience. You just need a well-known aggregator. The mobile phone is seems like a good analogue of the walled garden model and unsurprisingly computers like Macs and Chromebooks show some of their roots there.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    It could have been AOL. The underlying power of the internet remains the ability to use it for virtually any application.
  - headsoup 7y ago
    I was only responding in kind to the above poster who provided no context for their answer... And context does matter, because in some places the internet is basically Facebook, which is certainly not open
- dleslie 7y ago
  I don't want to go back to an archipelego of incompatible networks; at one point we were struggling to cross the WWW, BBS, CompuServ and AOL divides. It's different than the modern era of different and incompatible messenger software; at least Discord and Slack route packets on the same network.

coldtea 7y ago

>Yeah, ultimately I think the Internet today is a lot more open and a lot more beneficial to liberal society than any network was in 1990. Yes, but not from how it was in 1999.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

I still think the internet was a net good.