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I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of th

by rswail 2mo ago

I've been on the "internet" since before there was one, back in 1984-6 when bang paths were email addresses and DNS hadn't been invented yet. I was on one of the earliest BBSs (pre-FIDO) in Melbourne run by Peter Jetson and "Bear's Bull" running on a CDC-6000 at RMIT. It's been an "eternal September" since Prodigy & Compuserve and then AOL joined the net, Usenet started degrading, people had more then 4-line sigs without a "-- " at the start of the sig, people top-quoted messages etc. So the internet has been dying all that time. Lived through the dotcom boom/crash, growth/death of Yahoo Groups/Geocities/stumbleupon/slashdot/fark/etc. I'm not sure whether AI/LLMs are really killing it more than the advent of social media and the endless slop that is time descending blogs. I'm not sure whether the internet is just becoming yet another broadcast media, where small voices are drowned out by media conglomerates and the endless suck of advertising, or whether it really is "dying". Either way, it will evolve, but whether it will evolve "well" is a very open question.

ColdStream 2mo ago
I guess it might be a good example of evolution in action. Evolution benefits those that can adapt the best, not those with the most abilities.
- rswail 2mo ago
  Yes and no, evolution by natural selection is essentially relying on random mutations. Our media environment is "intelligently designed" and can be modified by concerted action. We don't need to "evolve" to meet the monopolist social media ecosphere, we can modify it to remove the monopolies/oligarchies. There is absolutely no reason why X, Google, Facebook, Oracle etc can't be "trust busted" and broken up. The SpaceX IPO, conflating a space company with an AI and social media company to defraud people of the losses of Musk from his xAI and Twitter. It's actually a "conservative" move to break these companies up and democratize ownership via IPOs of spun-off companies. It worked when Standard Oil was broken up into Esso, Mobil etc.
obruchez 2mo ago
What is the problem with time descending blogs?

by rswail 2mo ago

ColdStream 2mo ago

I guess it might be a good example of evolution in action. Evolution benefits those that can adapt the best, not those with the most abilities.

rswail 2mo ago
Yes and no, evolution by natural selection is essentially relying on random mutations. Our media environment is "intelligently designed" and can be modified by concerted action. We don't need to "evolve" to meet the monopolist social media ecosphere, we can modify it to remove the monopolies/oligarchies. There is absolutely no reason why X, Google, Facebook, Oracle etc can't be "trust busted" and broken up. The SpaceX IPO, conflating a space company with an AI and social media company to defraud people of the losses of Musk from his xAI and Twitter. It's actually a "conservative" move to break these companies up and democratize ownership via IPOs of spun-off companies. It worked when Standard Oil was broken up into Esso, Mobil etc.

obruchez 2mo ago

What is the problem with time descending blogs?