4 ms·

That was a mostly prescient and enjoyable blast from the past. One thing though I was glad Gibson was wrong about: >"It will probably evolve into something con

by wamatt 14y ago

That was a mostly prescient and enjoyable blast from the past. One thing though I was glad Gibson was wrong about: >"It will probably evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun" While his point was/is true of many systems and organizations, the internet is one example that has really outdone itself in terms of sustaining an unrelenting resistance towards a global monoculture. Perhaps, like some older HN users here, when I go looking beyond the walled gardens of social networks, I feel just as fascinated by what I read today, as I did in the mid 90's.

Mahn 14y ago
Well, at least it's true there are some expectations now that there were not before: you can't show up with a "personal homepage" full of silly animated gifs, random midi music in the background and a photo as a repeating background image and likewise you cannot post a comment that sounds stupid, silly or random on any site and expect it to be accepted, so to speak. Most people would agree this is for the better, but hey, it is true there is less randomness and less fun, in a way.
- mseebach 14y ago
  It's the eternal september. When only a select few avantgardists are on the internet, you can generally assume that a random stupid comment is, in fact, brilliant (you just don't get it yet) - when everybody and their moms (literally) are there, you have to assume that a stupid comment is just that. The great thing is that the internet has infinite capacity for people to create and congregate in increasingly smaller communities where the initial assumption still holds - ie. if you're posting on HN, you're already within 4-5 sigmas of someone whose opinion I'd care about than the average person on the net.
d23 14y ago
I decided to stick my head into the "firehose" of Facebook's public graph API last night and ended up finding some strange spambots creating pages and posting thousands of Amazon links. I followed the trail, trying to figure out what they were doing and what the point was. No one had liked the pages, so it didn't seem to make sense that they were building links to Amazon and not their own site (which I could understand for SEO). Anyway, I ended up going to the furthest reaches of the internet, never really finding an answer, but I got that same feeling: holy hell, this is amazing! It's like being an explorer, going where only a few people have gone before. The internet can still be this, if you want it to be. You can still dig around the trenches, take the back-roads, see what you find, see what's going on behind the surface of the social networks and media. God damn, I love it.
- defen 14y ago
  Speaking of the furthest reaches of the internet - just last night I ended up on a website dedicated to warning us about the coming race-war between Neanderthal-humans (introvert/autistic/asperger spectrum), Cro-Magnon humans ("normal" people), and "melonheads" (psychopaths? maybe?). It appeared to be entirely serious. You see, 40,000 years ago the melonheads decided that the neanderthals needed to be wiped out, so they sent in a slave army of cro-magnons armed with high-tech weaponry such as spear throwers. And then.....you get the idea. I love finding crazy stuff like that.

by wamatt 14y ago

Mahn 14y ago

Well, at least it's true there are some expectations now that there were not before: you can't show up with a "personal homepage" full of silly animated gifs, random midi music in the background and a photo as a repeating background image and likewise you cannot post a comment that sounds stupid, silly or random on any site and expect it to be accepted, so to speak. Most people would agree this is for the better, but hey, it is true there is less randomness and less fun, in a way.

mseebach 14y ago
It's the eternal september. When only a select few avantgardists are on the internet, you can generally assume that a random stupid comment is, in fact, brilliant (you just don't get it yet) - when everybody and their moms (literally) are there, you have to assume that a stupid comment is just that. The great thing is that the internet has infinite capacity for people to create and congregate in increasingly smaller communities where the initial assumption still holds - ie. if you're posting on HN, you're already within 4-5 sigmas of someone whose opinion I'd care about than the average person on the net.

d23 14y ago

I decided to stick my head into the "firehose" of Facebook's public graph API last night and ended up finding some strange spambots creating pages and posting thousands of Amazon links. I followed the trail, trying to figure out what they were doing and what the point was. No one had liked the pages, so it didn't seem to make sense that they were building links to Amazon and not their own site (which I could understand for SEO). Anyway, I ended up going to the furthest reaches of the internet, never really finding an answer, but I got that same feeling: holy hell, this is amazing! It's like being an explorer, going where only a few people have gone before. The internet can still be this, if you want it to be. You can still dig around the trenches, take the back-roads, see what you find, see what's going on behind the surface of the social networks and media. God damn, I love it.

defen 14y ago
Speaking of the furthest reaches of the internet - just last night I ended up on a website dedicated to warning us about the coming race-war between Neanderthal-humans (introvert/autistic/asperger spectrum), Cro-Magnon humans ("normal" people), and "melonheads" (psychopaths? maybe?). It appeared to be entirely serious. You see, 40,000 years ago the melonheads decided that the neanderthals needed to be wiped out, so they sent in a slave army of cro-magnons armed with high-tech weaponry such as spear throwers. And then.....you get the idea. I love finding crazy stuff like that.