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Chris Dixon’s narrative feels more useful to me than the one presented by the author of this. In the internet’s early history, the commercial internet experien
by barnabee 3y ago
Chris Dixon’s narrative feels more useful to me than the one presented by the author of this.
In the internet’s early history, the commercial internet experience was very different and often about companies trying to make money with different rather than all powerful “big tech” platforms. And yes, of course many tried (and often failed) to commercialise it.
However, the experience of being “very online” back then was completely different and existed outside all that.
It was a world of IRC, newsgroups, independent forums, personal websites, DC++ hubs, LAN parties etc. that was nearly totally unrelated to big companies and websites. Yahoo vs Google was mostly irrelevant for people inhabiting this world, which was indeed much as Chris describes, at least from my perspective.
Although it evolved over time and was clearly under threat towards the end, this version of the internet lasted well up to the mid-late 2000s.
Summary: this post misses the point and does not paint a “more correct” narrative than Chris does in any meaningful way.
- Kye 3y agoI think the proliferation of narratives about the early web reflects the lack of centralization. Everyone had a different view of it. You could kind of see it as early memes made their way around forums with different people thinking their forum came up with it, only to have someone with a wider view point out it came from somewhere else. If someone was hanging out with the startup crowd back then, the narrative web3 people go for might be the most plausible version to them. There's an interesting modern case where a meme started on Mastodon, but then it popped up on Reddit and everyone seemed to have a different idea of which YouTuber/Twitter community/etc came up with it. https://mastodon.social/@picklemaddierix/100639571254871391 https://mastodon.social/@picklemaddierix/100639571254871391 https://old.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/bt9ww9/gender_is_a_scam_invented_by_bathroom_companies/ https://old.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/bt9ww9/gender_is... It might have been the first Mastodon meme to go viral on the wider internet.
- andybak 3y ago> It was a world of IRC, newsgroups, independent forums, personal websites, DC++ hubs, LAN parties etc. that was nearly totally unrelated to big companies and websites. I think you just described one of the "sub periods" covered in the article. That phase happened but it wasn't dominant for the whole 15 year era.
- barnabee 3y agoIt wasn’t dominant but it was there. It was where I was. Not just for a sub period. It’s not so important what was dominant as that things that weren’t dominant had so much more of a place online. Not now in the adtech monoculture. Now I am less online, in that way. I don’t care for what became almost the only options. I’ll take the Wild West and scam prone “web3” over any amount of the “modern web”.
- rchaud 3y agoChris Dixon pretends that AOL, AIM, Geocities and Angelfire didn't own a giant part of the consumer internet in the 90s. They were all centralized and ad-driven.