8 ms·

In early 2000-2007 I felt technology optimism (things like Digg, slashdot) about new websites and there was a hopefulness about new technology (file sharing) Th

In early 2000-2007 I felt technology optimism (things like Digg, slashdot) about new websites and there was a hopefulness about new technology (file sharing) The spirit of new technology that "there is something new" and the "this is how things work from now on" (WAP websites, floppy disks, guest books, simple 1megabyte web hosting, geocities, fan sites, myspace, WhatsApp on cheap phones). In other words, every new thing was something that may have been before but it was "this is how things work from now on". The platform defines and upholds the character of interaction. Twitter and Reddit do that and as pg highlights how twitter recipients is by algorithm. (From OP: "where you don't specify the recipients.") I have fond memories of writing HTML from magazines and in the eras before me it was handwriting text games into BASIC interpreters.

ryandrake 2y ago
The optimism and hopefulness got crushed under the boot of money. The spirit of sharing got crushed under the boot of copyright. The joy and excitement got crushed under the boot of metrics and engagement. In an alternate timeline, things could have gone a different way, but because the same old money and same old power structures controlled the direction of progress, we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney.
- energy123 2y ago
  Not untrue, but also not the only thing going on. The authoritarian movements of the 20th century wouldn't have been possible without mass media. But it wasn't the profit motive that was the prime culprit for this enablement. Ideologues found they had a powerful tool at their disposal to channel people's grievances towards an enemy, and to bind a large group of people behind this ideology. The inventors of the printing press and the radio didn't intend for it to be used this way.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > The inventors of the printing press and the radio didn't intend for it to be used this way. Well, at least the printing press was created to print the Bible - the "Gutenberg bible", named after its inventor, was the first mass produced book in the world [1], so it can be said that it was intended to get a large group of people behind an ideology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible
    - krige 2y ago
      Actually, no. The Gutenberg bible was not the goal of the printing press, although it might have been a business savvy move for a variety of reasons. We know that, possibly even before profitable Church orders of indulgences, it was used to print poem(s), of which one is still preserved in a museum, predating the bible by about 5 years.
      - klez 2y ago
        Let me nitpick here. The fact that something was printed before the Bible doesn't prove that spreading the Bible was not, in fact, the primary motive to invent the printing press. It could just mean that Gutenberg went with smaller stuff first.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- brink 2y ago
  > we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney Call me a cynic, but I really think that was the inevitable outcome. It's just flawed human nature. Yes, there are outliers - good people who make and keep that vision to the best of their ability. But the overwhelming majority will always be there to drive it towards the dismal outcome you're witnessing now.
  - ternnoburn 2y ago
    I think it's human nature under capitalism. I think before the 1800s there were loads of different societies that valued things like community and mutual support over "got mine". This is the fundamental assertion of anarchism -- people generally like helping each other and like feeling useful. If basic needs were covered, we'd use most of our time doing things that felt meaningful, and those things would make everyone's lives better.
    - photonthug 2y ago
      I mostly agree but propose another amendment: this is human nature under late-stage capitalism. Capitalism is pretty great in the beginning / middle, and can go on for a very long time in such a way that the interests of corporations, consumers, labor, and governments are all basically aligned. Late-stage is a very different game in all respects though. One risk we are facing now is that when most of the people alive have only seen the perversions of unregulated and unapologetic late-stage capitalism, they will think this is what it always has to look like. The impulse to switch to a polar opposite or burn everything down is ill advised but becomes hard to ignore.
      - ANewFormation 2y ago
        So many modern problems can be traced to 1971. [1] That is the year that the US defaulted on our obligations under Bretton Woods effectively ending the system and causing currencies to become completely fiat, enabling governments to effectively print unlimited funny money. This perverts capitalism so hard because you now end up with tens of trillions of dollars being dumped into the economy in horribly inefficient ways and so behaviors that make one likely to get some of this become far more economically relevant than just making the best product. Our current economic system is obviously completely unsustainable at this point and may well end up being one of the shortest lived economic experiments ever. That's particularly ironic because, as you alluded to, for most of everybody alive today this is just how it's always been! [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
- mongol 2y ago
  I don't think it easily could have gone another way. Progress follows incentives, and money is a strong incentive. Only very fundamental changes to copyright and "publishing accountability" legislation could have put us on another path.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  money and the realization that this "new" web was half computing half society .. and we now get the same need for rules, safety, morality as in the real world
alliao 2y ago
it's a shame we can't recreate it somehow and even kept the optimism in a snapshot format. things weren't pretty, a bit clunky even. Unicode wasn't around, so encoding itself was a big deal all by itself. Internet was slow but it somehow retained the most critical part of application. there were many search engines, the first 5yrs or so when google arrived was the height of tech optimism for me, the search works so well it felt like magic. and most articles online were very personal. it felt like a village where people moved there voluntarily and were very eager to share with other villagers. alas.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Sounds like you just grew up. I hear lots of people romanticizing the good old days not thinking about all the people who thought those good days were actually their current bad days, they were simply older than you; and similarly, I see lots of young people saying that these recent times are the good days while older people lament their downturn.
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  This is not necessarily just a matter of perception if society is indeed generally on a downward arc. This sounds melodramatic yet it's quite trivial to list countless things that have become much worse, while it's somewhat more difficult to list things that have become much better. It's the issue with economic/technological development as the main milestone. Would you rather live as an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, or in poverty in the US today? Basically nobody would pick the latter choice but by the things we would typically list as better, a person in poverty today would have while our Ancient Greek could only dream of such. But it seems there's more to life than smartphones, medicine, and air conditioning.
- shombaboor 2y ago
  bots, perpetual scams, enshittification, walled gardens, ai slop make me think things were better back in the day objectively content wise. no doubt the speed and general base tech has improved though
jillesvangurp 2y ago
The only thing that changed is that the people that were there are now grumpy middle aged people complaining that things have changed around them. Not realizing that it's they that have changed the most. For technology optimism, look at younger generations. You are not going to find it in older generations. It's not a technical problem; it's a problem with aging. Young people are still expressing themselves online. Mostly not using any of the tools used by us older people. And good for them. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. I don't have a lot of patience for people of my own age these days. Not a lot of creativity there. Lovely people but just not very inspiring. Most of their great achievements are in the past. I try to keep some young people around me to keep me a bit more engaged. Much more fun. Young people haven't changed at all. I'm at risk of sliding into old age and being all grumpy about it. But I refuse to. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It's not technology that's stopping people from expressing themselves but the fact that they no longer have the mental agility to make the most of what at the time were very primitive tools. If it was there (again) would you use it? Hint: it's still there and you are not using it like you used to! All the old tools still work. And there are some newer ones that work even better. The tools are there. But you aren't.
- graemep 2y ago
  I would say that is young people have different, and IMO lower, expectations. People of our age group expected internet technologies to be democratising and empowering. Instead they have become centralised and controlled. PG is is right that Twitter's advantage was that it did not feel like it was owned by a private company. The problem is, that that feeling was entirely incorrect. Unlike open protocols things controlled by private companies are inevitably enshittified.
  - arkh 2y ago
    > People of our age group expected internet technologies to be democratising and empowering. *People of your age group who knew and had access to Internet 30 years ago, most people were not using internet. They did not expect anything from something they did not know anything about. Nowadays internet is a daily tool for billions from all age, from most countries and from many economic levels. It has been democratized. It has empowered a lot of people. And I'm sure many would like it to help do more of it. I'd bet more than during your time.

ryandrake 2y ago

The optimism and hopefulness got crushed under the boot of money. The spirit of sharing got crushed under the boot of copyright. The joy and excitement got crushed under the boot of metrics and engagement. In an alternate timeline, things could have gone a different way, but because the same old money and same old power structures controlled the direction of progress, we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney.

energy123 2y ago
Not untrue, but also not the only thing going on. The authoritarian movements of the 20th century wouldn't have been possible without mass media. But it wasn't the profit motive that was the prime culprit for this enablement. Ideologues found they had a powerful tool at their disposal to channel people's grievances towards an enemy, and to bind a large group of people behind this ideology. The inventors of the printing press and the radio didn't intend for it to be used this way.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > The inventors of the printing press and the radio didn't intend for it to be used this way. Well, at least the printing press was created to print the Bible - the "Gutenberg bible", named after its inventor, was the first mass produced book in the world [1], so it can be said that it was intended to get a large group of people behind an ideology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible
  - krige 2y ago
    Actually, no. The Gutenberg bible was not the goal of the printing press, although it might have been a business savvy move for a variety of reasons. We know that, possibly even before profitable Church orders of indulgences, it was used to print poem(s), of which one is still preserved in a museum, predating the bible by about 5 years.
    - klez 2y ago
      Let me nitpick here. The fact that something was printed before the Bible doesn't prove that spreading the Bible was not, in fact, the primary motive to invent the printing press. It could just mean that Gutenberg went with smaller stuff first.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
brink 2y ago
> we got the timeline where the Internet turned into Addictive Pay-per-view Disney Call me a cynic, but I really think that was the inevitable outcome. It's just flawed human nature. Yes, there are outliers - good people who make and keep that vision to the best of their ability. But the overwhelming majority will always be there to drive it towards the dismal outcome you're witnessing now.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  I think it's human nature under capitalism. I think before the 1800s there were loads of different societies that valued things like community and mutual support over "got mine". This is the fundamental assertion of anarchism -- people generally like helping each other and like feeling useful. If basic needs were covered, we'd use most of our time doing things that felt meaningful, and those things would make everyone's lives better.
  - photonthug 2y ago
    I mostly agree but propose another amendment: this is human nature under late-stage capitalism. Capitalism is pretty great in the beginning / middle, and can go on for a very long time in such a way that the interests of corporations, consumers, labor, and governments are all basically aligned. Late-stage is a very different game in all respects though. One risk we are facing now is that when most of the people alive have only seen the perversions of unregulated and unapologetic late-stage capitalism, they will think this is what it always has to look like. The impulse to switch to a polar opposite or burn everything down is ill advised but becomes hard to ignore.
    - ANewFormation 2y ago
      So many modern problems can be traced to 1971. [1] That is the year that the US defaulted on our obligations under Bretton Woods effectively ending the system and causing currencies to become completely fiat, enabling governments to effectively print unlimited funny money. This perverts capitalism so hard because you now end up with tens of trillions of dollars being dumped into the economy in horribly inefficient ways and so behaviors that make one likely to get some of this become far more economically relevant than just making the best product. Our current economic system is obviously completely unsustainable at this point and may well end up being one of the shortest lived economic experiments ever. That's particularly ironic because, as you alluded to, for most of everybody alive today this is just how it's always been! [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
mongol 2y ago
I don't think it easily could have gone another way. Progress follows incentives, and money is a strong incentive. Only very fundamental changes to copyright and "publishing accountability" legislation could have put us on another path.
agumonkey 2y ago
money and the realization that this "new" web was half computing half society .. and we now get the same need for rules, safety, morality as in the real world

alliao 2y ago

it's a shame we can't recreate it somehow and even kept the optimism in a snapshot format. things weren't pretty, a bit clunky even. Unicode wasn't around, so encoding itself was a big deal all by itself. Internet was slow but it somehow retained the most critical part of application. there were many search engines, the first 5yrs or so when google arrived was the height of tech optimism for me, the search works so well it felt like magic. and most articles online were very personal. it felt like a village where people moved there voluntarily and were very eager to share with other villagers. alas.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Sounds like you just grew up. I hear lots of people romanticizing the good old days not thinking about all the people who thought those good days were actually their current bad days, they were simply older than you; and similarly, I see lots of young people saying that these recent times are the good days while older people lament their downturn.

ANewFormation 2y ago
This is not necessarily just a matter of perception if society is indeed generally on a downward arc. This sounds melodramatic yet it's quite trivial to list countless things that have become much worse, while it's somewhat more difficult to list things that have become much better. It's the issue with economic/technological development as the main milestone. Would you rather live as an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, or in poverty in the US today? Basically nobody would pick the latter choice but by the things we would typically list as better, a person in poverty today would have while our Ancient Greek could only dream of such. But it seems there's more to life than smartphones, medicine, and air conditioning.
shombaboor 2y ago
bots, perpetual scams, enshittification, walled gardens, ai slop make me think things were better back in the day objectively content wise. no doubt the speed and general base tech has improved though

jillesvangurp 2y ago

The only thing that changed is that the people that were there are now grumpy middle aged people complaining that things have changed around them. Not realizing that it's they that have changed the most. For technology optimism, look at younger generations. You are not going to find it in older generations. It's not a technical problem; it's a problem with aging. Young people are still expressing themselves online. Mostly not using any of the tools used by us older people. And good for them. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. I don't have a lot of patience for people of my own age these days. Not a lot of creativity there. Lovely people but just not very inspiring. Most of their great achievements are in the past. I try to keep some young people around me to keep me a bit more engaged. Much more fun. Young people haven't changed at all. I'm at risk of sliding into old age and being all grumpy about it. But I refuse to. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It's not technology that's stopping people from expressing themselves but the fact that they no longer have the mental agility to make the most of what at the time were very primitive tools. If it was there (again) would you use it? Hint: it's still there and you are not using it like you used to! All the old tools still work. And there are some newer ones that work even better. The tools are there. But you aren't.

graemep 2y ago
I would say that is young people have different, and IMO lower, expectations. People of our age group expected internet technologies to be democratising and empowering. Instead they have become centralised and controlled. PG is is right that Twitter's advantage was that it did not feel like it was owned by a private company. The problem is, that that feeling was entirely incorrect. Unlike open protocols things controlled by private companies are inevitably enshittified.
- arkh 2y ago
  > People of our age group expected internet technologies to be democratising and empowering. *People of your age group who knew and had access to Internet 30 years ago, most people were not using internet. They did not expect anything from something they did not know anything about. Nowadays internet is a daily tool for billions from all age, from most countries and from many economic levels. It has been democratized. It has empowered a lot of people. And I'm sure many would like it to help do more of it. I'd bet more than during your time.