10 ms·

It hurts to read this. How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer? Was it just the realities of money, that an end user would rather

by eterm 13y ago

It hurts to read this. How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer? Was it just the realities of money, that an end user would rather pay a tiny fraction of the real cost of being truly on line and pay instead with their freedom? We used to laugh at AOLers because they weren't experiencing the real internet, because they sold themselves out to an online service. Are today's ISPs with their filtering and port blocking and packet shaping, really any better?

antocv 13y ago
The masses. We lost because of the great masses, the eternal october but on a much major scale. The same people that still watch TV and who become numb from their everyday medium to low-wage work, all those who are fighting against each other to climb the ladder just a tiny amount up. See the original internet users were scientists, officers, business people, those early adopters who have the resources and curiosity to use and shape it it. Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment. Most people dont even have a concept of what the internet is. They just kind of randomly click buttons and call their laptops "plaything". Ive seen people pay for 4G but their modem only by default runs on 3G. Meh.
- tomrod 13y ago
  Those unwashed masses are what make modern tech possible. Should we go back to BBS days?
- DougBTX 13y ago
  But aren't we too the masses? It was before my time, but wasn't it the Eternal September?
- junto 13y ago
  That reminds me of this awesome picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o...
- crusso 13y ago
  How sadly and extraordinarily elitist.
- egypturnash 13y ago
  > Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment. Did you ever hang out in a computer lab full of people busily attaining a PhD in muds? There were a hell of a lot of people who used the net as a toy, even back in the text-only days.
eksith 13y ago
> How did we lose the freedom Money came into the picture. And I'd say we're in worse shape now since even in the AOL days, you would still know that this isn't the real "internet". Now, we've been lulled in the false sense that we're getting unfiltered (un-throttled) access, when in fact, it's just a carefully crafted image. I look forward to the day "Internet Service Provider" has been completely replaced with "Ubiquitous Wireless Mesh".
- crusso 13y ago
  Money came into the picture. You have it completely backwards. I "discovered" the Internet in 1988 when I got a job in the IT department of the University I attended. I LOVED it. I transferred files, participated a lot in news groups, played MUDs, made friends in Europe... it was wonderful. When I graduated a few years later, I had to kiss the Internet goodbye. Without attending a major University that poured tons of money into maintaining a connection to the Internet, I had no hope of staying on it. I remember telling my parents about this amazing network of computers and saying something to the effect of, "It's fantastic, but I don't see how most people will ever get to use it because it's so expensive." Afterall, the Internet had been in existence for decades but was completely unavailable to home users. Then they opened the Internet up for commercial use and the web came along. MONEY CAME INTO THE PICTURE. Tons of it. A few years later, every business felt like it had to be on the Internet in some way. With all that money flowing into web sites and interconnects, access from home became dirt cheap. Commercialization is what made the Internet available for the masses. It amazes me that here we are not even twenty years later and people are rewriting history, demonizing the very framework that made the Internet successful.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Perhaps I should clarify. When money came into the picture, small-time ISPs and countless dial-up providers (many who offered some short time free) were popping up everywhere. They were quickly gobbled up or mismanaged to the ground as time went on and what remained was far from the competition (the more equal peers concept) as now only handful of companies control access to the world. Your university was likely connected via early backbone which would have been sold to a company or is being maintained outside it's jurisdiction and is likely being manipulated purely for exploitation. Commercialization isn't killing the internet. Monopolization is.
VMG 13y ago
What are you talking about? The internet has been a great success for the masses: Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, Facebook all bring an immeasurable benefit to it's users. Of course not everything is perfect, but I much rather have today's internet than the internet of 1993
- romaniv 13y ago
  I would postulate that if Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook went permanently offline tomorrow, absolutely nothing of significance would change either online or in the society. People would still find ways to do the same things, maybe even better ways. The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched. If anything, your list shows how centralized the Internet has become. After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services.
  - eterm 13y ago
    This was part of the point I wanted to emphasize. This article talks at how amazing usenet was with it's millions of words a day. Now any article would take of the valuation of usenet with it's millions of words a day. Someone making a modern usenet wouldn't open their protocol in fear of losing advertising money. Would twitter, snapchat, etc have their valuations if they released fully open protocols (both client and server)?
  - crusso 13y ago
    The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more. I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming environments. Facebook and other social media have been given much deserved credit for allowing democratic organization of an unprecedented level in the Middle East. Wikipedia is astoundingly useful for learning things quickly about math, history, science, culture, etc. Skype keeps my parents in touch with their grandchildren even better than I kept in touch with my own grandparents when I lived an hour away from them growing up. You could go on all day describing companies and Internet industries that have completely changed the way people live: Ebay, Salesforce.com, CNN.com, Blizzard, etc. After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services. The brands are the ones that dominate the services being covered, just like in the old days Xerox was a verb that stood in for the service of making photocopies.
mseebach 13y ago
> How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer? It's not lost in any real sense, you just have a romanticised picture of "the good old days". Look up the the term BOFH for a reality-check. A dial-up ISP would be oversubscribed and thus effectively throttled, just like today. Downloading too much on your university account, especially in peak hour, would get you banned. If you want total freedom, then as now, you are free to buy a dedicated line - and they are much, much cheaper today.
- dijit 13y ago
  $1,000 for a leased line half a mile away last time I checked, that excludes set up fee.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Exactly. In 1995: The cost of access to the Internet via 56 kbit/s or 64 kbit/s leased lines varies enormously throughout the OECD area (Table 9). In countries such as Canada and Finland it is possible to get extremely inexpensive access to the Internet via 56 kbit/s and 64 kbit/s leased line connections. In fact, the price quoted for a 56 kbit/s leased line access to the Internet by the Helix Internet, an IAP in British Columbia, was less expensive than a listed 56 kbit/s leased line charge, over two kilometres, from the PTO used in OECD comparisons in the “Communications Outlook” to represent Canada. The reason Helix can offer a less expensive service is because it purchases capacity from a reseller of BC-Tel’s network in British Columbia. If best practice pricing is defined as the lowest available prices then the suppliers in Canada (US$7 000) and Finland (US$6 000) appear to have set the current benchmarks. This finding is confirmed from within the Internet access industry by EUnet’s Wim Vik who says Finland has the least expensive prices in Europe because of the competitive provision of infrastructure.viii In fact very little separates the prices of these countries when it is considered the Canadian charge includes a router at the customer site. By way of contrast with the low prices found in Finland and Canada, ten OECD countries had a leased line basket price per annum higher than US$10 000, five a basket price higher that US$20 000 and a further three with charges higher than US$30 000. Overall the average price for leased line access to the Internet in countries with telecommunication infrastructure competition was 44 per cent less expensive than countries with monopoly provision of infrastructure. http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2758588.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2758588.pdf Don't forget inflation. In 1995 your $1000 was worth only $652. What was considered "extremely cheap" in 1995 is 10x more expensive than what you seem to imply is prohibitively expensive today. And never mind the speed - your leased line is probably 100mbps, that's 1800x faster than 56kbps. EDIT: Strictly speaking off-topic, but in the spirit of this thread: I typed "what did a leased line internet conneciton cost in 1995" into Google, it transparently fixed my spelling mistake and gave my this PDF as the first hit. This is truly an awesome time to be alive.
jstalin 13y ago
Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before, any information is at our fingertips, anyone who wants to create a web site is free to do so and post whatever they want (except maybe in China), commerce is available to the individual on a global basis, etc etc. Whining about the "good ole days" when .000001% of the population had even heard of the internet and it was reserved, at great cost, to academics and researchers, is just pathetic.
- seiji 13y ago
  Billions of people are connected to each other like never before All controlled by about 5 corporations at the top.
  - sneak 13y ago
    Did anyone ever really think it would be any different? At least we're still allowed to rent servers without a license, and make our own webpages.
    - thisiswrong 13y ago
      >Did anyone ever really think it would be any different? Er, Yes! I'd say no one back then would have ever wanted the internet to be as privatized, militarized, and censored as it is now. We need to take the internet back into the hands of the people by adopting mesh networks. This is how the internet needs to become... and fast : http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/24/activists-creating-decentralized-mesh-network-that-cant-be-blocked-filtered-or-silenced/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/24/activists-creatin... With the rise of cryptocurrencies there is huge potential to make mesh networking catch on around the globe : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300911.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300911.0 Non-technical users can already easily set up mesh networks using smartphone apps : http://opengarden.com/ http://opengarden.com/
      - mseebach 13y ago

by eterm 13y ago

antocv 13y ago

The masses. We lost because of the great masses, the eternal october but on a much major scale. The same people that still watch TV and who become numb from their everyday medium to low-wage work, all those who are fighting against each other to climb the ladder just a tiny amount up. See the original internet users were scientists, officers, business people, those early adopters who have the resources and curiosity to use and shape it it. Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment. Most people dont even have a concept of what the internet is. They just kind of randomly click buttons and call their laptops "plaything". Ive seen people pay for 4G but their modem only by default runs on 3G. Meh.

tomrod 13y ago
Those unwashed masses are what make modern tech possible. Should we go back to BBS days?
DougBTX 13y ago
But aren't we too the masses? It was before my time, but wasn't it the Eternal September?
junto 13y ago
That reminds me of this awesome picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o...
crusso 13y ago
How sadly and extraordinarily elitist.
egypturnash 13y ago
> Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment. Did you ever hang out in a computer lab full of people busily attaining a PhD in muds? There were a hell of a lot of people who used the net as a toy, even back in the text-only days.

eksith 13y ago

> How did we lose the freedom Money came into the picture. And I'd say we're in worse shape now since even in the AOL days, you would still know that this isn't the real "internet". Now, we've been lulled in the false sense that we're getting unfiltered (un-throttled) access, when in fact, it's just a carefully crafted image. I look forward to the day "Internet Service Provider" has been completely replaced with "Ubiquitous Wireless Mesh".

crusso 13y ago
Money came into the picture. You have it completely backwards. I "discovered" the Internet in 1988 when I got a job in the IT department of the University I attended. I LOVED it. I transferred files, participated a lot in news groups, played MUDs, made friends in Europe... it was wonderful. When I graduated a few years later, I had to kiss the Internet goodbye. Without attending a major University that poured tons of money into maintaining a connection to the Internet, I had no hope of staying on it. I remember telling my parents about this amazing network of computers and saying something to the effect of, "It's fantastic, but I don't see how most people will ever get to use it because it's so expensive." Afterall, the Internet had been in existence for decades but was completely unavailable to home users. Then they opened the Internet up for commercial use and the web came along. MONEY CAME INTO THE PICTURE. Tons of it. A few years later, every business felt like it had to be on the Internet in some way. With all that money flowing into web sites and interconnects, access from home became dirt cheap. Commercialization is what made the Internet available for the masses. It amazes me that here we are not even twenty years later and people are rewriting history, demonizing the very framework that made the Internet successful.
- eksith 13y ago
  Perhaps I should clarify. When money came into the picture, small-time ISPs and countless dial-up providers (many who offered some short time free) were popping up everywhere. They were quickly gobbled up or mismanaged to the ground as time went on and what remained was far from the competition (the more equal peers concept) as now only handful of companies control access to the world. Your university was likely connected via early backbone which would have been sold to a company or is being maintained outside it's jurisdiction and is likely being manipulated purely for exploitation. Commercialization isn't killing the internet. Monopolization is.

VMG 13y ago

What are you talking about? The internet has been a great success for the masses: Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, Facebook all bring an immeasurable benefit to it's users. Of course not everything is perfect, but I much rather have today's internet than the internet of 1993

romaniv 13y ago
I would postulate that if Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook went permanently offline tomorrow, absolutely nothing of significance would change either online or in the society. People would still find ways to do the same things, maybe even better ways. The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched. If anything, your list shows how centralized the Internet has become. After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services.
- eterm 13y ago
  This was part of the point I wanted to emphasize. This article talks at how amazing usenet was with it's millions of words a day. Now any article would take of the valuation of usenet with it's millions of words a day. Someone making a modern usenet wouldn't open their protocol in fear of losing advertising money. Would twitter, snapchat, etc have their valuations if they released fully open protocols (both client and server)?
- crusso 13y ago
  The Internet of the 90s wasn't as widespread, but it had a much greater impact on areas of life and people it touched Having grown up before the age of the Web/Internet, I couldn't disagree more. I use Youtube on a regular basis to learn about things. Of the top of my head: gardening methods, worm composting, repairing a cracked ipad screen, fixing a macbook with soda spilled on it, learning about new programming environments. Facebook and other social media have been given much deserved credit for allowing democratic organization of an unprecedented level in the Middle East. Wikipedia is astoundingly useful for learning things quickly about math, history, science, culture, etc. Skype keeps my parents in touch with their grandchildren even better than I kept in touch with my own grandparents when I lived an hour away from them growing up. You could go on all day describing companies and Internet industries that have completely changed the way people live: Ebay, Salesforce.com, CNN.com, Blizzard, etc. After all, you didn't name technologies, you named brands/services. The brands are the ones that dominate the services being covered, just like in the old days Xerox was a verb that stood in for the service of making photocopies.

mseebach 13y ago

> How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer? It's not lost in any real sense, you just have a romanticised picture of "the good old days". Look up the the term BOFH for a reality-check. A dial-up ISP would be oversubscribed and thus effectively throttled, just like today. Downloading too much on your university account, especially in peak hour, would get you banned. If you want total freedom, then as now, you are free to buy a dedicated line - and they are much, much cheaper today.

dijit 13y ago
$1,000 for a leased line half a mile away last time I checked, that excludes set up fee.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Exactly. In 1995: The cost of access to the Internet via 56 kbit/s or 64 kbit/s leased lines varies enormously throughout the OECD area (Table 9). In countries such as Canada and Finland it is possible to get extremely inexpensive access to the Internet via 56 kbit/s and 64 kbit/s leased line connections. In fact, the price quoted for a 56 kbit/s leased line access to the Internet by the Helix Internet, an IAP in British Columbia, was less expensive than a listed 56 kbit/s leased line charge, over two kilometres, from the PTO used in OECD comparisons in the “Communications Outlook” to represent Canada. The reason Helix can offer a less expensive service is because it purchases capacity from a reseller of BC-Tel’s network in British Columbia. If best practice pricing is defined as the lowest available prices then the suppliers in Canada (US$7 000) and Finland (US$6 000) appear to have set the current benchmarks. This finding is confirmed from within the Internet access industry by EUnet’s Wim Vik who says Finland has the least expensive prices in Europe because of the competitive provision of infrastructure.viii In fact very little separates the prices of these countries when it is considered the Canadian charge includes a router at the customer site. By way of contrast with the low prices found in Finland and Canada, ten OECD countries had a leased line basket price per annum higher than US$10 000, five a basket price higher that US$20 000 and a further three with charges higher than US$30 000. Overall the average price for leased line access to the Internet in countries with telecommunication infrastructure competition was 44 per cent less expensive than countries with monopoly provision of infrastructure. http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2758588.pdf http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2758588.pdf Don't forget inflation. In 1995 your $1000 was worth only $652. What was considered "extremely cheap" in 1995 is 10x more expensive than what you seem to imply is prohibitively expensive today. And never mind the speed - your leased line is probably 100mbps, that's 1800x faster than 56kbps. EDIT: Strictly speaking off-topic, but in the spirit of this thread: I typed "what did a leased line internet conneciton cost in 1995" into Google, it transparently fixed my spelling mistake and gave my this PDF as the first hit. This is truly an awesome time to be alive.

jstalin 13y ago

Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before, any information is at our fingertips, anyone who wants to create a web site is free to do so and post whatever they want (except maybe in China), commerce is available to the individual on a global basis, etc etc. Whining about the "good ole days" when .000001% of the population had even heard of the internet and it was reserved, at great cost, to academics and researchers, is just pathetic.

seiji 13y ago
Billions of people are connected to each other like never before All controlled by about 5 corporations at the top.
- sneak 13y ago
  Did anyone ever really think it would be any different? At least we're still allowed to rent servers without a license, and make our own webpages.
  - thisiswrong 13y ago
    >Did anyone ever really think it would be any different? Er, Yes! I'd say no one back then would have ever wanted the internet to be as privatized, militarized, and censored as it is now. We need to take the internet back into the hands of the people by adopting mesh networks. This is how the internet needs to become... and fast : http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/24/activists-creating-decentralized-mesh-network-that-cant-be-blocked-filtered-or-silenced/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/24/activists-creatin... With the rise of cryptocurrencies there is huge potential to make mesh networking catch on around the globe : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300911.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300911.0 Non-technical users can already easily set up mesh networks using smartphone apps : http://opengarden.com/ http://opengarden.com/
    - mseebach 13y ago