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The piece resonated with me a lot—the idea that things were better back before computers became mainstream—right up until they identified the key date where thi

The piece resonated with me a lot—the idea that things were better back before computers became mainstream—right up until they identified the key date where things fell apart as 1995. At that point I had to take a step back and reevaluate the whole thing, because for me the equivalent date was 2014, 20 years later. I missed the very early years of computing, but for me the heyday was the Flash years. I got a copy of Flash and I felt like I could do anything—all the cool games were built by the same tool that I had installed on my computer, and my budding programming skills were like black magic to my friends and family. It was a superpower. Meanwhile, the internet in those days was small and populated mostly by smart and interesting people gathered in small-to-medium sized phpBB servers. The rise of Facebook and smartphones spelled the end of that era, and everything since then has been shallow and hollow by comparison as the internet began catering for the lowest common denominator. That said, now I'm stuck reevaluating my perspective on all that. For this author, my own golden age was after the fall of theirs. I was part of the wave of users who had it too easy—the upstarts who intruded on the good thing they had going. There are two broad explanations I can think of for this: 1. Computing has been declining since the 90s and my golden age was genuinely less good than the author's. 2. Each generation gets cranky and nostalgic with age, and this is just another case of "back in my day". The modern internet feels so genuinely terrible that I can't help but think it must be #1, but #2 is such a common cognitive bias that I can't really dismiss it either.

chneu 2y ago
>Meanwhile, the internet in those days was small and populated mostly by smart and interesting people gathered in small-to-medium sized phpBB servers. The hurdle to get online kept a lot of people offline. The hurdle to get online and post is so, so low nowadays that most of the Internet is just garbage. I'm not saying there aren't gems out there. Just that "bad" has gotten more prevalent because creating has become so easy.
benfortuna 2y ago
>The modern internet feels so genuinely terrible The enshitification is real, but I would attribute that to being hijacked by advertising platforms. Social media algorithms are literally derived from algorithms for showing relevant ads, and as a result you must be "identified" anywhere you go. Two easy solutions for a better experience: 1. Don't use any sites that use algorithms exclusively (e.g. no Facebook, use Youtube subscriptions rather than the front page, etc.) 2. Don't use sites that require you to login unless there is clear value in doing that (e.g. you can browse Reddit without logging in if you don't intend to comment, etc.)
- cruzcampo 2y ago
  [dead]
lubujackson 2y ago
We remember the good and forget the negatives. Like waiting 5 minutes for a 500k image to load, trying to configure jumpers on a sound card, or waiting multiple minutes to load a game (or the next level in a game...) The joys of today are just different from when I was a kid. I can bemoan that games can't truly have secrets and lore any more, which is true. But my son can craft an entire world in Minecraft and have his friends play in it while they chat and he can craft his own secrets and experiences for his friends. He focuses on the fun he can have today and cares not at all about the fun that existed before him.
- queenkjuul 2y ago
  My most distinct memories of Photoshop in the 2000s are of it crashing my entire system and trashing two hours of work. I don't even want to think what IDEs were like to work with in the 90s
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  There was nothing wrong with configuring jumpers on (sound)cards, if you knew what you did, and why other stuff was jumpered which way. In fact it was more reliable before 'plug & pray' turned into a working thing with PCI and good modern BIOS(for that time).
- olyjohn 2y ago
  I mean, that's fun that your kids can play Minecraft and build in it. But does that teach them anything about technology? Half the fun of having a computer back in the day was digging through the filesystem, mucking with settings and breaking things... looking at what was on floppy disks and CDROMs (I found Weezer's music video and a Pinball game on the Windows 95 CDROM, it was thrilling). You learned how the computers worked, and that was powerful. It enabled you to do so much more than just play games. You could view source, and suddenly you were a web developer. You could hit up Warez sites and get access to all the professional software that you couldn't afford. 10 year old me now, would have ended up playing with my parents smartphone, then getting sucked into endless feeds of shit, and actually learning nothing. I might have given up. There's no curiosity on the dominant computing platforms because you can't do what you want with them, you can only do what you're allowed to do. A pocket computer could be so powerful, and indeed they do a lot, but they could be so much more than a conduit for middlemen to take your money. Yes I know that ESP32s and Pis and lots of cool experimental things exist. And they are cool. But the initial experience of using a computer back in the day was what sparked my interest. Locked down iPhones and Android tablets let you run Apps. What a discouraging experience that must be.
queenkjuul 2y ago
I got a hand me down copy of Flash 5 around 2003 and i absolutely adored it. Didn't actually learn much programming (i was 9 years old) but the ease of animation and wiring up buttons was absolutely enchanting. Personally, though, i don't really have a golden age. I love retro computing, it's how I spend a terrible amount of my time, and most of it i spend thinking, "thank god we don't live like this anymore" lmao. The Internet specifically, though, was more fun in the pre-Facebook/Twitter/Instagram world, absolutely no question there.
trod1234 2y ago
A great many things have been declining over the decades, and it actually goes back much further. I've been looking into this for quite some time now. It starts with a generational attack on children through their education to indoctrinate and induce maladaptive behavior that they will carry forward their entire lives. Centralized systems are inherently prone to infection and contagion by malevolent interests. One worm and the world dies. The outcomes we see today are the result of dynamics caused by a whipsaw in time, where everything is collapsing, and control is the only thing that can stop it. Although that is flawed reasoning because you can't stop certain chaotic events. Most hysteresis problems involving such show believing that you can stop those is true is quite absurd without perfect future sight which is impossible. The pivotal point was late 1970s, through fiat money educational material was updated, and teachers reeducated to a more modern principle of education. In reality, what they mean by this is the use of torture in the classroom. The elements, structure, and clustering that make up that label definitionally can be found in books such as Joost Meerloo, or Robert Lifton on the subject matter (1950s). As chaos grew, control was claimed as the solution, and this included control of information and practice on dependencies which are now no longer common knowledge. Going back to education, the pedagogy is often known to a layperson as teaching by rote, but few have a rigorous definition of that. The structure follows what teachers and administrators now openly call today "Lying to Children". Following this strategy, at the start of education you are given a fundamentally flawed and useless model, to teach abstract concepts. That model in progressive steps thereafter (in subsequent sections) requires you to unlearn, and relearn various parts of it becoming only slightly more useful with each step. In the process you are exposed to the structures inherent in torture at a time where you cannot differentiate truth from lie biologically. Creativity, and true understanding are stamped out, and the educated are viewed as the beacons of intelligence. Asking questions not being directly taught is rewarded with frustration, and PTSD is not uncommon in the victim. This began and coincided with the boomer generation entering roles in education fresh out of college. These vulnerable states often allow temporarily distorted thought to be permanent in the very young. Prior to that time, people were taught following greek curricula in rational thought/method/rationalism (Greeks, Descartes, Kant, etc). The general process being one where you start with a working system, you reduce that system to first principles that are known true, and then go about building a model from that to predict future events in such systems. This in engineering is known as reducing to practice. You'll notice the former structure, which is used in conjunction with several other strategies to gatekeep knowledge behind math, is almost the proverbial opposite of the latter. Inherent in rote pedagogy is that it allows and follows elements of gnosticism, which is also refuted and generally considered evil. That consensus hasn't stopped this structure from being used. Torture fundamentally breaks people, and it has become common practice for teachers to torture the children in a way that most people without knowledge of such things would never recognize, the teachers themselves included. In blaming the failures on the student when its been orchestrated as a matter of structure in too many ways to relate in a small post like this, they torture the student. Go to any 2nd hand book store, compare the textbooks published after 1978 or newer with those that are older. You'll see the difference. Why has no one noticed? That is simple. Older books are and have been for at least the last 20 years, being destroyed through a sophisticated silent system reminiscent of Orwells 1984. Libraries budgets are tied to active circulated titles. Anything low circulation is donated to private 3rd-parties who decide what is objectionable (memory hole), and what is not (a Goodwill book to be resold). Anything that doesn't sell above market value is eventually memory holed. Incidentally, the issues continued to spread as the boomer generation received the torch of political power in the 90s. They still hold majority of political power today, having failed to pass the torch in 2010. They have been following the classic caricature of "dead men ruling" as described by Thomas Paine in the Rights of Man. People feared that all it would take is 1 bad generation, and history is proving this true. If the average person of a people is incapable of rational thought, its just a matter of time before they go extinct.

chneu 2y ago

>Meanwhile, the internet in those days was small and populated mostly by smart and interesting people gathered in small-to-medium sized phpBB servers. The hurdle to get online kept a lot of people offline. The hurdle to get online and post is so, so low nowadays that most of the Internet is just garbage. I'm not saying there aren't gems out there. Just that "bad" has gotten more prevalent because creating has become so easy.

benfortuna 2y ago

>The modern internet feels so genuinely terrible The enshitification is real, but I would attribute that to being hijacked by advertising platforms. Social media algorithms are literally derived from algorithms for showing relevant ads, and as a result you must be "identified" anywhere you go. Two easy solutions for a better experience: 1. Don't use any sites that use algorithms exclusively (e.g. no Facebook, use Youtube subscriptions rather than the front page, etc.) 2. Don't use sites that require you to login unless there is clear value in doing that (e.g. you can browse Reddit without logging in if you don't intend to comment, etc.)

cruzcampo 2y ago
[dead]

lubujackson 2y ago

We remember the good and forget the negatives. Like waiting 5 minutes for a 500k image to load, trying to configure jumpers on a sound card, or waiting multiple minutes to load a game (or the next level in a game...) The joys of today are just different from when I was a kid. I can bemoan that games can't truly have secrets and lore any more, which is true. But my son can craft an entire world in Minecraft and have his friends play in it while they chat and he can craft his own secrets and experiences for his friends. He focuses on the fun he can have today and cares not at all about the fun that existed before him.

queenkjuul 2y ago
My most distinct memories of Photoshop in the 2000s are of it crashing my entire system and trashing two hours of work. I don't even want to think what IDEs were like to work with in the 90s
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
There was nothing wrong with configuring jumpers on (sound)cards, if you knew what you did, and why other stuff was jumpered which way. In fact it was more reliable before 'plug & pray' turned into a working thing with PCI and good modern BIOS(for that time).
olyjohn 2y ago
I mean, that's fun that your kids can play Minecraft and build in it. But does that teach them anything about technology? Half the fun of having a computer back in the day was digging through the filesystem, mucking with settings and breaking things... looking at what was on floppy disks and CDROMs (I found Weezer's music video and a Pinball game on the Windows 95 CDROM, it was thrilling). You learned how the computers worked, and that was powerful. It enabled you to do so much more than just play games. You could view source, and suddenly you were a web developer. You could hit up Warez sites and get access to all the professional software that you couldn't afford. 10 year old me now, would have ended up playing with my parents smartphone, then getting sucked into endless feeds of shit, and actually learning nothing. I might have given up. There's no curiosity on the dominant computing platforms because you can't do what you want with them, you can only do what you're allowed to do. A pocket computer could be so powerful, and indeed they do a lot, but they could be so much more than a conduit for middlemen to take your money. Yes I know that ESP32s and Pis and lots of cool experimental things exist. And they are cool. But the initial experience of using a computer back in the day was what sparked my interest. Locked down iPhones and Android tablets let you run Apps. What a discouraging experience that must be.

queenkjuul 2y ago

I got a hand me down copy of Flash 5 around 2003 and i absolutely adored it. Didn't actually learn much programming (i was 9 years old) but the ease of animation and wiring up buttons was absolutely enchanting. Personally, though, i don't really have a golden age. I love retro computing, it's how I spend a terrible amount of my time, and most of it i spend thinking, "thank god we don't live like this anymore" lmao. The Internet specifically, though, was more fun in the pre-Facebook/Twitter/Instagram world, absolutely no question there.

trod1234 2y ago

A great many things have been declining over the decades, and it actually goes back much further. I've been looking into this for quite some time now. It starts with a generational attack on children through their education to indoctrinate and induce maladaptive behavior that they will carry forward their entire lives. Centralized systems are inherently prone to infection and contagion by malevolent interests. One worm and the world dies. The outcomes we see today are the result of dynamics caused by a whipsaw in time, where everything is collapsing, and control is the only thing that can stop it. Although that is flawed reasoning because you can't stop certain chaotic events. Most hysteresis problems involving such show believing that you can stop those is true is quite absurd without perfect future sight which is impossible. The pivotal point was late 1970s, through fiat money educational material was updated, and teachers reeducated to a more modern principle of education. In reality, what they mean by this is the use of torture in the classroom. The elements, structure, and clustering that make up that label definitionally can be found in books such as Joost Meerloo, or Robert Lifton on the subject matter (1950s). As chaos grew, control was claimed as the solution, and this included control of information and practice on dependencies which are now no longer common knowledge. Going back to education, the pedagogy is often known to a layperson as teaching by rote, but few have a rigorous definition of that. The structure follows what teachers and administrators now openly call today "Lying to Children". Following this strategy, at the start of education you are given a fundamentally flawed and useless model, to teach abstract concepts. That model in progressive steps thereafter (in subsequent sections) requires you to unlearn, and relearn various parts of it becoming only slightly more useful with each step. In the process you are exposed to the structures inherent in torture at a time where you cannot differentiate truth from lie biologically. Creativity, and true understanding are stamped out, and the educated are viewed as the beacons of intelligence. Asking questions not being directly taught is rewarded with frustration, and PTSD is not uncommon in the victim. This began and coincided with the boomer generation entering roles in education fresh out of college. These vulnerable states often allow temporarily distorted thought to be permanent in the very young. Prior to that time, people were taught following greek curricula in rational thought/method/rationalism (Greeks, Descartes, Kant, etc). The general process being one where you start with a working system, you reduce that system to first principles that are known true, and then go about building a model from that to predict future events in such systems. This in engineering is known as reducing to practice. You'll notice the former structure, which is used in conjunction with several other strategies to gatekeep knowledge behind math, is almost the proverbial opposite of the latter. Inherent in rote pedagogy is that it allows and follows elements of gnosticism, which is also refuted and generally considered evil. That consensus hasn't stopped this structure from being used. Torture fundamentally breaks people, and it has become common practice for teachers to torture the children in a way that most people without knowledge of such things would never recognize, the teachers themselves included. In blaming the failures on the student when its been orchestrated as a matter of structure in too many ways to relate in a small post like this, they torture the student. Go to any 2nd hand book store, compare the textbooks published after 1978 or newer with those that are older. You'll see the difference. Why has no one noticed? That is simple. Older books are and have been for at least the last 20 years, being destroyed through a sophisticated silent system reminiscent of Orwells 1984. Libraries budgets are tied to active circulated titles. Anything low circulation is donated to private 3rd-parties who decide what is objectionable (memory hole), and what is not (a Goodwill book to be resold). Anything that doesn't sell above market value is eventually memory holed. Incidentally, the issues continued to spread as the boomer generation received the torch of political power in the 90s. They still hold majority of political power today, having failed to pass the torch in 2010. They have been following the classic caricature of "dead men ruling" as described by Thomas Paine in the Rights of Man. People feared that all it would take is 1 bad generation, and history is proving this true. If the average person of a people is incapable of rational thought, its just a matter of time before they go extinct.