6 ms·

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving

• hoyd 2y ago
  Is the essay somewhere online?
  • 101008 2y ago
    No, sorry, I never wrote it.
• lxgr 2y ago
  The Internet being an opt-in thing that you'd consciously connect to at a set our of the day, not something that would reach out to you and notify you about all kinds of things at random times, was definitely a different feeling. Back then, it felt like a parallel world; now it's more like an overlay on this one.
  • ComodoHacker 2y ago
    I guess AI is the next thing that's still opt-in now, will be opt-out tomorrow and then no-escape. It would be interesting to read a nostalgic thread from 2070...
    • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
      That's life isn't it? Mailing addresses, electricity, car-based transportation in the US, technologies and cultural institutions change and create worlds dependent on them to function. There was probably a time when the very idea that you stayed up after the sun set was seen as a silly modern affliction and indeed for most of human prehistory humans did not have access to artificial lighting. Now there are people, like me, who consider themselves as night owls.
  • XorNot 2y ago
    This is one of those things where I just don't understand what world people are living in, but it's always written in this bizarre passive voice where someone is just "the victim" of installing the Facebook app on their phone. What is your experience of your phone and why are you so passive about it? You're getting unwanted notifications but, then, what, don't uninstall the app? Don't mute the app? Don't click "sign out"?
    • qubex 2y ago
      Facebook and its ilk are barred from issuing notifications on my devices. There’s so little real ‘friend’ interaction these days I don’t miss anything and they abused notifications so thoroughly by literally spamming me random group stuff that I’ve just disabled notifications as a way of counteracting the lack of granularity. Must be five years now.
    • lxgr 2y ago
      It seems like you’re projecting a value statement into a comment which was really only intended to be an observation. What gave you the idea that I’m getting unwanted notifications or that I am in some other way helpless about them?
  • fullspectrumdev 2y ago
    This captures it quite well. I remember due to having dial up until around 2008, I’d compose a forum post “offline” on the computer, save it as a text file on a flash drive (previously a floppy!), and get around to posting it when I was able to get online. Same for emails, etc. communication felt a lot more “thought out” in a sense - you would have limited time to send or receive information.
• aembleton 2y ago
  > We attend a concert? We publish pictures and videos almost instantly Switch to a data plan with less than 2GB of data per month and you'll be a lot more thoughtfull about how much you post instantly. You may still post it but you'll do it when you get home; just like the old days.
  • dotnet00 2y ago
    I was on a 2GB data plan for most of this past decade, despite being terminally online, it never really got in the way. Would still share pictures immediately, they aren't that big (and most services compress video down to too horrible quality for it to be worth sharing). Still never managed to hit 2GB in a month. The vast majority of my data usage now, on unlimited, comes from watching YouTube.
• fragmede 2y ago
  you reminded me that we used to pay for Internet access by the hour. You'd pay $X for one hour of Internet use, so you'd go online, do a thing and then disconnect to save money. local vs remote for email was such a different time. you'd have a fat client on your laptop, and you'd do a bunch of writing offline, before connecting, having the program sync, and then disconnect. how times have changed!
  • nogridbag 2y ago
    I still feel bad I left my parents' computer online all night to download a .wav (?) audio file of Mario jumping from Nintendo.com. Back then, the closest most kids got to Nintendo was via video game magazines. So going to Nintendo.com for the first time and downloading an audio file was a special moment. The download was taking hours and I have no idea how much it cost my parents. I just remember being so disappointed the next day when it turned out to only be a 1 second audio file. THAT WAS IT?!?! I WAITED ALL THAT TIME FOR THAT? :)
    • jraph 2y ago
      Wait, it didn't take an entire night to download a 1 sec wav (assuming the worst) file, did it? 1 sec of wav would be 176.4 kB (assuming 44.1 kHz, 16 bits, stereo), or 176.4 * 1024 * 8 bits. That divided by 28800 bits/s (assuming a 28k modem) gives 50.1 seconds. A 96 kHz 32 bit stereo wav would be 768 kB, 4-5 times that so still less than 5 minutes. What am I missing?
      • nogridbag 2y ago
        This was a very long time ago, so I don't remember all details. But yes the download took hours. This was basically the first website I visited when I got internet access (and I would assume most kids did as well). So this predates 28.8 modems. I believe I had a 14.4 modem, was out in the country, and websites were not stable. This is somewhat of a core memory for me, so I do remember some details clearly. Simply going to Nintendo.com took a very long time. Lots of us regular users started coming online for the first time and likely overloaded their servers. Navigating to the section of the website where it listed audio files to download was a whole endeavor of itself. It took multiple attempts to download that dang jumping sound. I would leave it running during the day and when I came back later, the download would have randomly timed out. And I think at least once my parents picked up one of phones in the house and messed it up. I believe as a kid I quickly learned that the web was faster at night time when less people were online. So after several failed attempts, I started it at night time and woke up to it completed. Not sure if you were online at that time, but I don't think you can simply reduce this to math equation.
• mike_hock 2y ago
  You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing. You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform. Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Telegram? You can't talk to anyone anymore unless you submit to one of a few megacorps and run their software.
  • mfuzzey 2y ago
    Telegram has plenty of alternative clients. The others probably don't
  • behringer 2y ago
    Element is where it's at.
    • pkulak 2y ago
      Yup. Matrix and Jabber are what’s left. Sadly, all of the US is on iMessage, locking us not only into proprietary chat, but proprietary hardware to run the proprietary chat. I don’t really like my iPhone, but I bridge iMessage to my Matrix server, and as soon as I switch to Android, my iMessage account turns into email address only and I’m locked out. I’ve honestly considered paying for a phone line to an iPhone that stays plugged in at home, to free me to use whatever other phone I want to. That’s how far we’ve fallen.
  • jedberg 2y ago
    I miss Adium. All my chats in one place. Beeper is trying to replicate that. https://www.beeper.com https://www.beeper.com
  • prawn 2y ago
    The app (at least when I used it decades ago) didn’t recommend accounts to follow or insert junk in your list. That’s the key reason I resent all social media I use today.
  • 2y ago
• 0xedd 2y ago
  Get a dumb phone or a Linux phone. Stop complaining. Be an example.
  • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    Or just don't take your phone out? I always read these threads and think that the folks here probably have issues disconnecting and so they're longing for a world where social pressures forced disconnection. I still frequently don't check my socials until after work or after a long social activity. I'm upfront with my contacts about that too, and most of my friends are like me. I only monitor my phone constantly if I'm awaiting an important call or email, but then I usually have something big going on in my life at the time.
    • 101008 2y ago
      I am not complaining about myself, but how society behaves. Yes I can do it, but it doesn't mean the rest will follow me.
      • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
        Does it matter? Was society behaving like you in other ways back then? I'm younger than the set here but not young certainly, and I distinctly remember how lonely it was to be a nerd in the '90s. I've assumed through most of my life that the most you can do is control how you and your circle behave. My circle varies on the introversion/extroversion scale where I'm in the middle and roughly get back to comms within a day, my more introverted friends may take multiple days, and have extroverted friends who get back within hours or even minutes. My partner is on the extroverted side and is constantly monitoring her comms but before the smartphone she had a rich rolodex of contacts who she was constantly calling.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • dotnet00 2y ago
        Why do people have to follow you? I also experienced the "offline first" life and while I miss the wilder, more unsanitized nature of the internet from back then, I much prefer being able to always be connected.
• throwaway14356 2y ago
  I've been pondering library box and pirate box kind of setups as well as mesh networks. I've never used any of that but the idea of having a separate network bound to a location seems rather interesting (be it in a kind of pokemon go kind of way) You get a new flavor of privacy, no moaning about copyright, no nonsensical political correctness, much less need for security, people you can do things with irl and possibly very high bandwidth use or cpu intensive applications. It might even have limited time service like say outside office hours. We use to have a popular forum around here ran by a pub. It became to much work to maintain and the owner wasn't interested enough. It was suppose to be for regular visitors. If it was only accessible locally and on its own wifi network you set it up once and it would work just fine. Not having access to the darts competition from home is a feature not a drawback.