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>> "The quickest way for a 'dramatic' speedup of the web is to install an ad blocker." Because most websites would go out of business and there wouldn't be muc

>> "The quickest way for a 'dramatic' speedup of the web is to install an ad blocker." Because most websites would go out of business and there wouldn't be much left to browse?

jacquesm 17y ago
Possibly. But then again, I don't see any ads on HN, and I do remember a version of the web that did not have advertising on it. It also had a significantly better signal to noise ration than the current one does.
- dkarl 17y ago
  That web still exists, if you can keep your eyes off the flashy pretty stuff.
- tptacek 17y ago
  I had dialin access in '93, and my first browser was Mosaic on Win3.1 under Trumpet Winsock, and I ran the tech side of an ISP from 95-97, and under no circumstances would I ever trade the web of '97 for the one I have today, where I can watch TV, browse Cooks Illustrated, learn Calculus, and read entire books. I wouldn't even trade Hacker News for Usenet. The signal to noise ratio in '97 was high because there was very little signal, and not as many people cared.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > The signal to noise ratio in '97 was high because there was very little signal I don't agree with that at all, there was plenty of signal, it just wasn't in 'rich media' format. Pages were static and simple instead of having a multi-media circus to put across a simple point. RiderOfGiraffes has a neat little page up elsewhere right now that could have existed in exactly the same form in '96. The web changed dramatically when 'big money' moved in and started turning the whole thing into a shopping mall / advertising space and I really think that that is degrading the medium. The internet has certainly improved in many ways since then as you rightfully illustrate but there was lots of good in those early days (of the web) as well, and plenty of it got destroyed. Usenet is a good example, there are those who argue that usenet had had it's run and that the web killed it, but it is my opinion that the spam is what killed it, not the competition from the web. Probably I prefer to have less signal but of a higher quality rather than an absolute overload where you have to sift for the bits that are worth your time.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      I think if you and I go point for point on modern web vs. '97 web, you will lose pretty quickly. The things you remember from the halcyon days of the Internet (Archie, Gopher, anonymous FTP sites, Sendmail vulnerabilities, and Usenet) aren't even better than the individual things that have replaced them today. Quick. What's the site you most miss that the modern "corporate" web has destroyed?
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        I agree with you that 'point for point' I'd lose in a heartbeat. I'm not talking about individual sites, it is more a sense of atmosphere, the lack of commerce.
        tptacek 17y ago
        And the lack of opportunity, an odd thing to overlook on this site.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        I would think that it was the opposite, the enormous opportunity, to change the world significantly for the better, there was an atmosphere of 'this time we'll get it right', simply because 'big money' was looking the other way. That changed somewhere around 1997 or so, and was absolutely unstoppable. Anyway, I can see there is no way I'm going to be able to make you see what I'm getting at. I'm grasping at putting a feeling in to words and apparently the words fail me. But I can't help that feeling...
        jacquesm 17y ago
        Ok, I've decided to put some action to my feeling, I'm going to run an experiment to make advertising on my sites optional, since I feel that I have become a part of the problem. We'll see how it works out.
  - NateLawson 17y ago
    I'll identify one problem that the Internet ca. 1997 did not have: excessive discussion site mobility. If I wanted security information, I subscribed to one mailing list, Bugtraq. (Ok, I toyed with Firewalls@GreatCircle and a few others, but they were a waste of time). I read comp.security.unix and sci.crypt. These never migrated. I never had to unsubscribe from Bugtraq and move to "new cybersecurity" or any other crap. Contrast that to post-1997. You had a brief blip of SecurityFocus around 1999, and in 2003 it began fragmenting into a myriad of blogs. For tech news, we saw the migration of slashdot/digg/reddit/HN. Each time they grew, lost focus, and people with words worth reading moved on. Bugtraq is around today but I do not read it. Take each minor bug report and multiply it by X-dozen vendor echo bulletins and it becomes unbearable. HN is on the verge of falling into the political trap of digg. Meanwhile, random blogs pop up, have some useful posts for < 1 year and then die off or evolve into navel-gazing and I unsubscribe. An RSS reader is useless to find new blogs. I'll sit out twitter until it turns into a ghost town in a few years, thanks. The BBS was great for locality. You knew most people on it because it was extremely local. Earlier Usenet was the same, just organized by topic instead of location. I contend that the web replacement for these has not yet arrived. Craigslist or random PHPBB message boards may be somewhat local, but the former is too broad for real discussion and the latter tends to be too narrow (say, a neighborhood association focused on pets). Topical discussion is very fragmented and migrates between sites too often. I don't think it's an advance to have to keep changing sites or access methods (NNTP, Web, RSS) without any real change in functionality. It's change due to novelty or running from spammers or dumb commenters. We need less change, not more. This is something that was better in 1997.

>> "The quickest way for a 'dramatic' speedup of the web is to install an ad blocker." Because most websites would go out of business and there wouldn't be much left to browse?

jacquesm 17y ago

Possibly. But then again, I don't see any ads on HN, and I do remember a version of the web that did not have advertising on it. It also had a significantly better signal to noise ration than the current one does.

dkarl 17y ago
That web still exists, if you can keep your eyes off the flashy pretty stuff.
tptacek 17y ago
I had dialin access in '93, and my first browser was Mosaic on Win3.1 under Trumpet Winsock, and I ran the tech side of an ISP from 95-97, and under no circumstances would I ever trade the web of '97 for the one I have today, where I can watch TV, browse Cooks Illustrated, learn Calculus, and read entire books. I wouldn't even trade Hacker News for Usenet. The signal to noise ratio in '97 was high because there was very little signal, and not as many people cared.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > The signal to noise ratio in '97 was high because there was very little signal I don't agree with that at all, there was plenty of signal, it just wasn't in 'rich media' format. Pages were static and simple instead of having a multi-media circus to put across a simple point. RiderOfGiraffes has a neat little page up elsewhere right now that could have existed in exactly the same form in '96. The web changed dramatically when 'big money' moved in and started turning the whole thing into a shopping mall / advertising space and I really think that that is degrading the medium. The internet has certainly improved in many ways since then as you rightfully illustrate but there was lots of good in those early days (of the web) as well, and plenty of it got destroyed. Usenet is a good example, there are those who argue that usenet had had it's run and that the web killed it, but it is my opinion that the spam is what killed it, not the competition from the web. Probably I prefer to have less signal but of a higher quality rather than an absolute overload where you have to sift for the bits that are worth your time.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I think if you and I go point for point on modern web vs. '97 web, you will lose pretty quickly. The things you remember from the halcyon days of the Internet (Archie, Gopher, anonymous FTP sites, Sendmail vulnerabilities, and Usenet) aren't even better than the individual things that have replaced them today. Quick. What's the site you most miss that the modern "corporate" web has destroyed?
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      I agree with you that 'point for point' I'd lose in a heartbeat. I'm not talking about individual sites, it is more a sense of atmosphere, the lack of commerce.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        And the lack of opportunity, an odd thing to overlook on this site.
        jacquesm 17y ago
        I would think that it was the opposite, the enormous opportunity, to change the world significantly for the better, there was an atmosphere of 'this time we'll get it right', simply because 'big money' was looking the other way. That changed somewhere around 1997 or so, and was absolutely unstoppable. Anyway, I can see there is no way I'm going to be able to make you see what I'm getting at. I'm grasping at putting a feeling in to words and apparently the words fail me. But I can't help that feeling...
        jacquesm 17y ago
        Ok, I've decided to put some action to my feeling, I'm going to run an experiment to make advertising on my sites optional, since I feel that I have become a part of the problem. We'll see how it works out.
- NateLawson 17y ago
  I'll identify one problem that the Internet ca. 1997 did not have: excessive discussion site mobility. If I wanted security information, I subscribed to one mailing list, Bugtraq. (Ok, I toyed with Firewalls@GreatCircle and a few others, but they were a waste of time). I read comp.security.unix and sci.crypt. These never migrated. I never had to unsubscribe from Bugtraq and move to "new cybersecurity" or any other crap. Contrast that to post-1997. You had a brief blip of SecurityFocus around 1999, and in 2003 it began fragmenting into a myriad of blogs. For tech news, we saw the migration of slashdot/digg/reddit/HN. Each time they grew, lost focus, and people with words worth reading moved on. Bugtraq is around today but I do not read it. Take each minor bug report and multiply it by X-dozen vendor echo bulletins and it becomes unbearable. HN is on the verge of falling into the political trap of digg. Meanwhile, random blogs pop up, have some useful posts for < 1 year and then die off or evolve into navel-gazing and I unsubscribe. An RSS reader is useless to find new blogs. I'll sit out twitter until it turns into a ghost town in a few years, thanks. The BBS was great for locality. You knew most people on it because it was extremely local. Earlier Usenet was the same, just organized by topic instead of location. I contend that the web replacement for these has not yet arrived. Craigslist or random PHPBB message boards may be somewhat local, but the former is too broad for real discussion and the latter tends to be too narrow (say, a neighborhood association focused on pets). Topical discussion is very fragmented and migrates between sites too often. I don't think it's an advance to have to keep changing sites or access methods (NNTP, Web, RSS) without any real change in functionality. It's change due to novelty or running from spammers or dumb commenters. We need less change, not more. This is something that was better in 1997.