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I think the author is overly optimistic about non-tech people. Non-tech people don't realize Google is getting worse or Chrome is bloated. Non-tech people go t

I think the author is overly optimistic about non-tech people. Non-tech people don't realize Google is getting worse or Chrome is bloated. Non-tech people go to Best Buy because "my computer is slow", drop triple or quadruple digits on a new laptop and then move on. The renaissance of the open, human internet is in full swing only among the small number of people who have an opinion about the open, human internet.

techfeathers 2y ago
I agree about overoptimism, and I hope we sort of don't have a renaissance of the open, human internet, and instead we have a renaissance of meatspace.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  Indeed. We've tried the "digitally intermediated life" thing, and Covid was a solid stress test of it. The "We can do all this digitally with computers and tablets!" sorts got everything they ever wanted. David Sax, who wrote The Future is Analog back in 2016, has another book from 2022: The Revenge of Analog. It looks at the data from at least the first year or two of Covid and concludes, "Wow, this is awful for humans." We need to get back to in person meeting with people, and find ways to expand that out again - it's been the default for most of human history, except about the past decade and change. We've tried it, and found it wanting. So let's go back to things we know work. I'm hopeful about the next generation of teenagers coming up - they've seen the digital destruction caused by smartphones everywhere, and at least some of them are opting to carry flip phones instead of smartphones. We're seeing schools starting to simply ban phones entirely during the day, with massively positive results. So I think the changes are happening!
  - christhecaribou 2y ago
    I want my remote work back from that period.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      it never left mon ami. i've been remote since 2015 and nothing has really changed. niche orgs and niche skillsets, usually highly in demand and qualified, will make it work.
  - iforgotpassword 2y ago
    What I really liked were small-ish online communities focused on a specific topic. Reddit is (was?) great for finding answers to weird issues and questions much faster due to its size, but I never really felt like I was part of a community in any subreddit. Still, with all that social media focused on self-promotion it was close enough to the old days of bulletin boards with aliases and not caring so much about who's behind them.
  - eikenberry 2y ago
    While Covid may have been bad for people on the whole, for myself and other introverts I know it was great. More remote work, less pressure for socializing in person, just chilling out with people I care about. Personally I'd love more variety of digital spaces to interact with other people, particularly alternatives for smaller communities, like HN, but with more variety. What I mean to say by saying this is that while I understand your use of the royal "we", I don't think you are speaking for everyone. The "things we know work" don't work for everyone and Covid was a welcome break for some of us. And while I wouldn't inflict Covid conditions on everyone just so I could be happier, unfortunately, the inverse doesn't seem to be true. Tyranny of the majority, as usual.
busterarm 2y ago
I agree. And if anything X/Twitter is gaining more relevance in normal peoples' lives, not less, since the acquisition. Mastodon or whatever other federated alternative you're peddling are where the political extremists and pedos hang out and regular people want absolutely nothing to do with that. Tech people of today are much more terminally-online than we were in 2004. We are not the cool kids this time around.
- emayljames 2y ago
  Twitter and musk are nothing but far right "political extremists and pedo's". You are kidding yourself if you think that twitter has or is gaining relevance. It has nose dived in users and has dramatically lost revenue from advertisers. Dont kid yourself.
  - caeril 2y ago
    Sequoia, and others (who actually receive the quarterly reports) seem pretty happy with their position.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      The only one who responded to requests for comments, was not happy: https://archive.is/yYnfo https://archive.is/yYnfo
- yunwal 2y ago
  > And if anything X/Twitter is gaining more relevance in normal peoples' lives Objectively untrue, Twitter lost ~35m (out of 370m) active users since the Elon acquisition. I'm not sure how much of that was due to his policies as opposed to people just losing interest, but people are leaving twitter/X.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    35m people globally is nothing. 20m less people voted for Democrats this week and that's just eligible US voters. The people leaving Twitter are terminally-online fringe weirdos, from the perspective of your average person. Just look around your own networks at the people who left: It's all hardline political people, infosec, trans activists, furries, etc. Those are not normies. I know it's hard to look in the mirror and say you're part of the echo chamber, but with high likelihood everyone posting on this board is exactly that. None of us here are normcore.
alwayslikethis 2y ago
> The renaissance of the open, human internet is in full swing only among the small number of people who have an opinion about the open, human internet. Has this ever been not true? Has the median person ever participated in this? Just like how the original golden age involved only a small portion of the population, so will this "web renaissance", in the best case.
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  This is kind of my point, but this any many other articles and opinion pieces are just breathless with optimism about how the Internet Golden Age will come again and it will topple all the evil social media and we will have Life Eternal in a digital Paradise that no corporation can drive us from. Well kind of? We, the enthusiasts, can just opt out of the social-media big corporate internet any time we want. But it's never going to happen on this grand scale that these starry-eyed people are dreaming about.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  Exactly. This type of comment is rare on HN. Thank you for publishing. Year after year, most HN commenters are continually fixated on these alleged "non-tech[nical]" people, the majority of computer users. Presumably for commercial reasons, but who knows.
croisillon 2y ago
anecdata: when i was sorking in support for a particular city service, i once called a client to inform them that we couldn't send them an email because "mailbox full" to what they answered: oh yeah i have heard about that but what should i do? buy a new telephone?

techfeathers 2y ago

I agree about overoptimism, and I hope we sort of don't have a renaissance of the open, human internet, and instead we have a renaissance of meatspace.

Syonyk 2y ago
Indeed. We've tried the "digitally intermediated life" thing, and Covid was a solid stress test of it. The "We can do all this digitally with computers and tablets!" sorts got everything they ever wanted. David Sax, who wrote The Future is Analog back in 2016, has another book from 2022: The Revenge of Analog. It looks at the data from at least the first year or two of Covid and concludes, "Wow, this is awful for humans." We need to get back to in person meeting with people, and find ways to expand that out again - it's been the default for most of human history, except about the past decade and change. We've tried it, and found it wanting. So let's go back to things we know work. I'm hopeful about the next generation of teenagers coming up - they've seen the digital destruction caused by smartphones everywhere, and at least some of them are opting to carry flip phones instead of smartphones. We're seeing schools starting to simply ban phones entirely during the day, with massively positive results. So I think the changes are happening!
- christhecaribou 2y ago
  I want my remote work back from that period.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    it never left mon ami. i've been remote since 2015 and nothing has really changed. niche orgs and niche skillsets, usually highly in demand and qualified, will make it work.
- iforgotpassword 2y ago
  What I really liked were small-ish online communities focused on a specific topic. Reddit is (was?) great for finding answers to weird issues and questions much faster due to its size, but I never really felt like I was part of a community in any subreddit. Still, with all that social media focused on self-promotion it was close enough to the old days of bulletin boards with aliases and not caring so much about who's behind them.
- eikenberry 2y ago
  While Covid may have been bad for people on the whole, for myself and other introverts I know it was great. More remote work, less pressure for socializing in person, just chilling out with people I care about. Personally I'd love more variety of digital spaces to interact with other people, particularly alternatives for smaller communities, like HN, but with more variety. What I mean to say by saying this is that while I understand your use of the royal "we", I don't think you are speaking for everyone. The "things we know work" don't work for everyone and Covid was a welcome break for some of us. And while I wouldn't inflict Covid conditions on everyone just so I could be happier, unfortunately, the inverse doesn't seem to be true. Tyranny of the majority, as usual.

busterarm 2y ago

I agree. And if anything X/Twitter is gaining more relevance in normal peoples' lives, not less, since the acquisition. Mastodon or whatever other federated alternative you're peddling are where the political extremists and pedos hang out and regular people want absolutely nothing to do with that. Tech people of today are much more terminally-online than we were in 2004. We are not the cool kids this time around.

emayljames 2y ago
Twitter and musk are nothing but far right "political extremists and pedo's". You are kidding yourself if you think that twitter has or is gaining relevance. It has nose dived in users and has dramatically lost revenue from advertisers. Dont kid yourself.
- caeril 2y ago
  Sequoia, and others (who actually receive the quarterly reports) seem pretty happy with their position.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    The only one who responded to requests for comments, was not happy: https://archive.is/yYnfo https://archive.is/yYnfo
yunwal 2y ago
> And if anything X/Twitter is gaining more relevance in normal peoples' lives Objectively untrue, Twitter lost ~35m (out of 370m) active users since the Elon acquisition. I'm not sure how much of that was due to his policies as opposed to people just losing interest, but people are leaving twitter/X.
- busterarm 2y ago
  35m people globally is nothing. 20m less people voted for Democrats this week and that's just eligible US voters. The people leaving Twitter are terminally-online fringe weirdos, from the perspective of your average person. Just look around your own networks at the people who left: It's all hardline political people, infosec, trans activists, furries, etc. Those are not normies. I know it's hard to look in the mirror and say you're part of the echo chamber, but with high likelihood everyone posting on this board is exactly that. None of us here are normcore.

alwayslikethis 2y ago

> The renaissance of the open, human internet is in full swing only among the small number of people who have an opinion about the open, human internet. Has this ever been not true? Has the median person ever participated in this? Just like how the original golden age involved only a small portion of the population, so will this "web renaissance", in the best case.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago
This is kind of my point, but this any many other articles and opinion pieces are just breathless with optimism about how the Internet Golden Age will come again and it will topple all the evil social media and we will have Life Eternal in a digital Paradise that no corporation can drive us from. Well kind of? We, the enthusiasts, can just opt out of the social-media big corporate internet any time we want. But it's never going to happen on this grand scale that these starry-eyed people are dreaming about.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Exactly. This type of comment is rare on HN. Thank you for publishing. Year after year, most HN commenters are continually fixated on these alleged "non-tech[nical]" people, the majority of computer users. Presumably for commercial reasons, but who knows.

croisillon 2y ago

anecdata: when i was sorking in support for a particular city service, i once called a client to inform them that we couldn't send them an email because "mailbox full" to what they answered: oh yeah i have heard about that but what should i do? buy a new telephone?