I spent thousands of hours (probably nearly ten thousand) on Wikipedia in my youth. As someone who worked multiple jobs as a teenager to afford a computer and d

I spent thousands of hours (probably nearly ten thousand) on Wikipedia in my youth. As someone who worked multiple jobs as a teenager to afford a computer and dial-up internet, and was self-taught at programming and other things, the internet, and later Wikipedia specifically, were amazing resources for me growing up in the 1990s-early 2000s. I do recognize, however, that I'm the exception and not the rule in this regard. The internet now is very different than the internet I grew up on, and it isn't the future I hoped for (where I imagined everyone would learn as I did, directly benefiting from having access to much of humanity's knowledge). I lament what the internet has turned into - the overwhelming success of centralized platforms, surveillance capitalism, viral misinformation, etc. I worry about how much worse this all may get once deep-fakes become commonplace... P.S. I also played video games - but overall I spent more time reading and learning/building things than playing games.