3 ms·

Speaking as a Gen X'er myself, this does not resonate with me. Sure, I feel some nostalgia for the "older days" here and there, but who doesn't? But to wholesal

Speaking as a Gen X'er myself, this does not resonate with me. Sure, I feel some nostalgia for the "older days" here and there, but who doesn't? But to wholesale abandon the Internet and modern tech? Hell no. For the downsides that exist, there are - by my accounting - an at least equal number of upsides (or rather, an equal magnitude of total upside, regardless of how you chunk that up). Give up Wikipedia, ArXiv, Youtube, HN, the EEVblog forums, the StackExchange network, the convenience of online shopping, (Netflix|Hulu|Prime|Max|etc), MUDs, Github (and before that, Sourceforge), and on and on and on and on... No freaking way.

Fricken 3y ago
The poisonous aspects of the internet could largely be alleviated by going back to dumbphones. I don't think you would have to change much else. Having the drug in your pocket at all times is what's making society sick. There wasn't a real problem during the desktop era.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  There were always shut-ins and recluses, even prior to smartphones going mainstream. We had suicide cults, publicly open pedophiles, microwaving animals et al in the '90s, and we had World of Warcraft in the early '00s, and people still used MySpace et al. Not saying you're wrong, but I am saying that where there's people, there's problems. If there wasn't "the internet", it'd be happening in public. You used to get way more mentally ill folks coming up and talking to strangers about what was making them paranoid, now you get them on Twitter.
re-thc 3y ago
Back to the stone age! Might as well give up on electricity too. I never understand these generalization articles either.
yuppie_scum 3y ago
From my perspective, the best of the internet was probably mid-late 00’s before FB/social media became omnipresent. Before the web became mobile optimized. One thing I probably couldn’t live without though would be Uber/Lyft. Transportation was a real pain before that.

Fricken 3y ago

The poisonous aspects of the internet could largely be alleviated by going back to dumbphones. I don't think you would have to change much else. Having the drug in your pocket at all times is what's making society sick. There wasn't a real problem during the desktop era.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
There were always shut-ins and recluses, even prior to smartphones going mainstream. We had suicide cults, publicly open pedophiles, microwaving animals et al in the '90s, and we had World of Warcraft in the early '00s, and people still used MySpace et al. Not saying you're wrong, but I am saying that where there's people, there's problems. If there wasn't "the internet", it'd be happening in public. You used to get way more mentally ill folks coming up and talking to strangers about what was making them paranoid, now you get them on Twitter.

re-thc 3y ago

Back to the stone age! Might as well give up on electricity too. I never understand these generalization articles either.

yuppie_scum 3y ago

From my perspective, the best of the internet was probably mid-late 00’s before FB/social media became omnipresent. Before the web became mobile optimized. One thing I probably couldn’t live without though would be Uber/Lyft. Transportation was a real pain before that.