4 ms·

This is interesting to me, because I've grown up in a time where I have (largely) not had the opportunity to see what the internet was like in the earlier days.

This is interesting to me, because I've grown up in a time where I have (largely) not had the opportunity to see what the internet was like in the earlier days. It's only recently that I've come to realize: the internet used to be very different. Anyways. I'm currently interested in healthcare, specifically medicine. I think that it would be satisfying to treat patients and potentially save their life, and then to realize that the doctor and patient have probably never had contact before, and might never have contact again in the future. Just one stranger caring for another. I'm not completely set on it, but there's many paths to follow at this point. I'm currently a SWE, and just feel that I want something more. To help people. To make their lives better.

ShredKazoo 4y ago
I wonder what a field guide to the old internet would look like. Here are some things I might include if I was writing such a guide: All-time top stories on reddit in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com:80/top?t=all https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com... reddit was originally a bit of a niche site for a tech audience, kinda like Hacker News. However, techies used over-represented on the internet anyways. "The internet used to be a lot more like HN" is generally a pretty decent first approximation. This is the reddit story which best captures the curiosity and wonder of its early days for me: https://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html https://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html Aaron Swartz's blog would be another thing I would include: https://old.reddit.com/domain/aaronsw.com/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/domain/aaronsw.com/top/?sort=top&t=al... A few decades ago there was a strain of progressive techno-optimism which has all but died out by this point. "Information wants to be free", Creative Commons, excitement about Wikipedia, Clay Shirky, One Laptop Per Child, Obama hope & change. I think of Aaron as being the poster child for that -- both a hacker and a progressive activist, advancing internet technology because he felt like it would help us advance as a society. Another thing I'd point to is Eric S Raymond's stuff. He was one of the major pioneers of the open source movement: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ If you want a book to read, I've recently been reading a book "Because Internet" which includes a linguistic history of the internet, going back to the earliest days.
- cwillu 4y ago
  It had its dark moments too: see the in-depth coverage of the SCO saga and related at groklaw.net
- oars 4y ago
  Wow, thank you for sharing this. Reddit was indeed just like HN. https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com:80/top?t=all https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com...
  - ShredKazoo 4y ago
    The top submission actually ends up being a surprisingly good guide to what was going on with the internet circa 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20060313005123/http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060313005123/http://www.paulgr... An interesting point is that the non-techies who initially used the internet socially were mostly teens and young adults on sites like MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc. (and IM services like AIM -- essentially like Google Chat) If you want to see what MySpace was, I suppose tagged.com is the nearest modern equivalent?

ShredKazoo 4y ago

I wonder what a field guide to the old internet would look like. Here are some things I might include if I was writing such a guide: All-time top stories on reddit in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com:80/top?t=all https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com... reddit was originally a bit of a niche site for a tech audience, kinda like Hacker News. However, techies used over-represented on the internet anyways. "The internet used to be a lot more like HN" is generally a pretty decent first approximation. This is the reddit story which best captures the curiosity and wonder of its early days for me: https://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html https://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html Aaron Swartz's blog would be another thing I would include: https://old.reddit.com/domain/aaronsw.com/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/domain/aaronsw.com/top/?sort=top&t=al... A few decades ago there was a strain of progressive techno-optimism which has all but died out by this point. "Information wants to be free", Creative Commons, excitement about Wikipedia, Clay Shirky, One Laptop Per Child, Obama hope & change. I think of Aaron as being the poster child for that -- both a hacker and a progressive activist, advancing internet technology because he felt like it would help us advance as a society. Another thing I'd point to is Eric S Raymond's stuff. He was one of the major pioneers of the open source movement: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ If you want a book to read, I've recently been reading a book "Because Internet" which includes a linguistic history of the internet, going back to the earliest days.

cwillu 4y ago
It had its dark moments too: see the in-depth coverage of the SCO saga and related at groklaw.net
oars 4y ago
Wow, thank you for sharing this. Reddit was indeed just like HN. https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com:80/top?t=all https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://reddit.com...
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  The top submission actually ends up being a surprisingly good guide to what was going on with the internet circa 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20060313005123/http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060313005123/http://www.paulgr... An interesting point is that the non-techies who initially used the internet socially were mostly teens and young adults on sites like MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc. (and IM services like AIM -- essentially like Google Chat) If you want to see what MySpace was, I suppose tagged.com is the nearest modern equivalent?