I miss the internet...

MindThreat

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Today, as I was commenting on something heavily politicized, I was grounded. The comment I had submitted was marked: "pending moderator approval due to our policy" which further meant, there's no way you're going to say what you are freely thinking nor are others going to be able to see it. Suddenly I had a flashback to the 90s when the internet was like a small home town. It was large but still had that small home town feeling. Everyone had a story to share, cool or fun pictures to add to their Geocities sites and everyone was just really in love with the technology and in love with sharing any and all information. It is after all, one of the most amazing communication breakthroughs to ever happen in our lifetime.

It took me a moment to realize what the internet has become and why I miss the early days before the mega networks took over and killed off the little guys. It was in this very moment of censorship that made me fully appreciate what we once had. Past-tense. We're now a society at the larger hand of a network, corporation or someone else that has to a "agree" with your view before it is allowed for anyone else to see it. Sure, it has always "kind of" been that way but never to this extent and more often than not, it would require more legwork to get something taken down.

I tend to do a lot of research in my spare time in regards to a lot of vintage computer stuff and generally hit the archive site. It's with great sadness that I see most of the real sites had died once MySpace really took off. Blogs were of course still a thing but not nearly quite the same as they were before with personal websites. I would stumble upon personal stories or ramblings by someone who was passionate about sharing the details of their life for many years and months and up until a certain point, no more updates. Generally right around the 2000 to 2002 mark. Some sites lasted a little longer, some died even sooner than that but it it's something that really brought me a deeper sadness of realization.

Everyone wants or wanted to be heard. They'd pour endless amounts of time and effort into a singe page or multiple webpages, learning HTML or other things and buying expensive computer gear just to do it all for fun and just to post a few pictures, some stories and a digital cat photo to their personal website. The nice thing about that is, we have things like archive to go back to have this rare glimpse into the early years of the internet, before MySpace, Facebook, Livejournal and many others that came along, trying to centralize everything but always failing for one reason or another. The flipside to that is, now everything requires a membership or login, is not public and as as result, there's now quite literally this 20-year gap of amazing amounts of information unable to be archived and things no one will ever see, just due to the shift of how our social networks operate now.

I miss Geocities.... and I miss Lycos. Alta Vista was a nice thing too to search people up, or so I remember. Kind of thought with the internet, we were past the dying breeds of a BBS, where people would share or post to and overnight the owner of said BBS could turn the lights off for all information never to be seen again. I'm finding myself feeling that unease again and realizing that the internet morphed into what I was afraid of happening with information if a BBS died back then, never to be found or seen again.

Guess I'm feeling quite nostalgic lately. I've got my Atari STe out and setup to play games, I've been taking pictures with a Sony Cybershot DSC-F717 and even have a B&W photo printer setup because all of this odd and goofy stuff, I still find enjoyable despite not being absolutely cutting edge. Maybe it's time to load up some X-Files, though I will admit Project Blue Book has been a nice void filler since we recently finished off the entire series of Alf. Not even really that much into aliens but it does seem that way with all the series we've been watching lately. Alf made me realize just how much we've changed as a society too. Can't tell you how many times I caught myself saying: "there's no way that would fly today if Alf said or did that!" and it's true.

I have included a picture of my non-existent cat created by AI to make this post relevant.

sombrerokitty.jpg
 
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wottle

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It certainly is a different time. Different even than it was 5-10 years ago. There's much to be said for keeping certain things in check, but the problem is believing that any one large group can be expected to no succumb to the lure of censoring others "for the good of all". The problem is that in our highly politicized time, the two extremes of each group both truly believe their opinions are what's best for society. Therefore, it's far too easy for those in charge to rationalize the censorship of the other side.

I think the early days of the internet were great because they offered a wonderful mechanism for sharing knowledge and insights without having such a massive influence on culture / society as a whole. Now that it is, there is much more potential for it to be used to influence (both for good or bad).

The challenge I see with things is that while many attribute todays challenges to malice, I think most of the problems we see come from well-meaning decisions and intentions that have less obvious unintended side-effects. It's certainly an interesting time to be observing it, albeit one that comes with a fair amount of frustration.
 

retr01

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It was fun when it was the Wild Wild West on the Internet. 🤠 Nowadays, it's not as fun. 😒 And to make things worse, the search engines like Google and even Duck Go Go become so dumb that it gets harder to find precisely what people are looking for.

And then, will the Internet become like what we saw in the Lawnmower Man movies? 😲

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Trash80toG4

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I miss the days of vibrant forums activity at Applefritter and the MLA from 2002 or so, pre Facebook infestation of the web. I don't know about the social media activity channels that have taken the place of long running discussions in the forums. Are they any good for searching long archived information as on the sites mentioned or is the social media interaction for the retro community even more ephemeral than the personal web sites that have gone missing?
 

Certificate of Excellence

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You run into it everywhere. I have experienced numerous attempts at censorship on a number of social platforms from macrumors to discord channels life macyak to facebarf to Youtube to others over the years. Whether it be vindictive users lashing out with weaponized victimhood culture when they dont like my opinion or perception, to being a casualty of crappy moderator rules more focused on the inclusiveness of 14year olds at the detriment of adult ideas and uninhibited dialog - it happens to any thinking adult who criticizes the status quo. The reality of this is shut up and be included or dont and be cancelled which is completely real. It is a scary thought that our lives are digitalized to such a depth that we can quite literally be erased from the cultural eye. When a society values equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, they inevitably will travel down the path of and the leaders will legislate the marginalizing, demonizing, & control of the majority in the name of the minority which is a recipe for fascistic control and the dissolution of your natural rights and freedom. This act has been repeated countless times through history & we see it being played out again here on the internet now.

Fascistic inclusivity levied not by the far right, but by globalist oligarchs manipulating popular culture to embrace a globalist identity & agenda devoid of ownership, borders and freedoms. Feelings over facts & fascism in the 21st century is alive and well and is going absolutely nowhere.

Choose your "friends" very, very wisely.
 
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retr01

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Ironic how Apple helped explode the Internet with the vintage Macs we love. :sneaky: ARPANET and Internet before the explosion and then the Dot com boom in the late 1990s was more for the military, government, and academic as well, as industry as people in general didn't see need for it. Enter Apple. People saw the need for it and today we have all those craziness. It seems it will transform into the Meta thingy that UglyFaceBarf is pushing for. Before long, people are jacked in the virtual world or "metaverse" for work and personal reasons. Oh boy.

Now Apple screams, "privacy, please!"

As Doc Brown would say, "Great Scott!"
 
I long for those days as well. They turned the "information superhighway" into an commercialized sales highway. Let's remember the original idea - making information accessible to everyone, by everyone, regardless of their location, education etc.

That battle has been lost, it's now a semi-automatic promotional trip which tracks you in ways that makes spying in former eastern bloc dictatorships look like a children's birthday party.

The "old style" web is still there. The problem isn't its existence, the problem is to find those lovely pages of individuals. The big search engines aren't too dumb to find them, they don't want to find them. They like brands. Brands mean money. That's what the whole thing is about. Hence no more "fan pages", "personal websites" and the like on the search result pages.

My favorite for finding pages is the search engine wiby.org. Different from The Old Net it's not an archive of long-gone pages with missing images and functionality. It's a search engine for uncommercialized pages still online. Since its discovery, I've spent many evenings visiting random pages on my Power Mac 8600 and learning stuff I never thought I'd want to learn.

Apart from free speech, that was another beauty of the original www. It brought me new insights, new ideas, ultimately it made me a better human being.

I've learnt about Nuclear Power, about a ICU nurse looking back and laughed about Cats that look like Hitler. I even discovered a great tech blog like Cheapskate's Guide.

Guys, it's up to us to recreate what we lost! Who if not we "nerds"?

Get off Google, get off Facebook, get off Discord! Yes, YOU CAN. I'm not using any of them anymore and I was heavily invested. If I can do, you can too!

Start coding your own personal website. Heck, you can even do that for fun on your old Performa! Share about what you care and what you do. Submit it to wiby. Spread the word. Let's build our www back. Be a creator again, not a consumer!
 
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JDW

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Today, as I was commenting on something heavily politicized, I was grounded. The comment I had submitted was marked: "pending moderator approval due to our policy" which further meant, there's no way you're going to say what you are freely thinking nor are others going to be able to see it... I miss the early days before the mega networks took over and killed off the little guys.
Does your mention of "mega networks" mean you posted on social media like a FaceBook group and got that message?

Regardless, I'm a big advocate of free speech online. It's risky, but worth it.

I also agree about those feelings of nostalgia. I still remember the dial-up BBS's of the mid 1980's. I enjoyed debating people about religion and politics even back then, and there were no moderator flags, yet we all kept it civil enough there were no death threats. Some may say "Oh, that was a different time, with different people," but I disagree about the people part. People are people. It's all about how many rules and regulations we've put into effect which hinder our enjoyment of life.

And that's partly what makes this forum a cut above the rest. Edit your posts for as long as you like, and for the most part moderators here aren't jumping down your back for every little statement or misstatement.
 

Drake

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Does your mention of "mega networks" mean you posted on social media like a FaceBook group and got that message?

Regardless, I'm a big advocate of free speech online. It's risky, but worth it.

I also agree about those feelings of nostalgia. I still remember the dial-up BBS's of the mid 1980's. I enjoyed debating people about religion and politics even back then, and there were no moderator flags, yet we all kept it civil enough there were no death threats. Some may say "Oh, that was a different time, with different people," but I disagree about the people part. People are people. It's all about how many rules and regulations we've put into effect which hinder our enjoyment of life.

And that's partly what makes this forum a cut above the rest. Edit your posts for as long as you like, and for the most part moderators here aren't jumping down your back for every little statement or misstatement.
This thread is now locked for moderation of individual thought.
*Just Kidding* 🤣

This is all a reminder of how I used to enjoy the internet of my youth and the inherent "wild west" feeling of dumping Warez.
 

eric

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The internet of yore wasn't really that much different, people harassing people, easy to spread viruses, toolbars, usenet spam, splitting IRC servers to gain ops and takeover a channel you didn't like, ping flood people off the internet, I could go on and on. I come here to talk about old computers and want everyone, even 14 year olds, to come here and have fun talking about computers. If people started discussing religion, politics, etc, I would leave - I want a place to discuss a hobby, not the world.
 

Certificate of Excellence

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The internet of yore wasn't really that much different, people harassing people, easy to spread viruses, toolbars, usenet spam, splitting IRC servers to gain ops and takeover a channel you didn't like, ping flood people off the internet, I could go on and on. I come here to talk about old computers and want everyone, even 14 year olds, to come here and have fun talking about computers. If people started discussing religion, politics, etc, I would leave - I want a place to discuss a hobby, not the world.
This is true. I recall moderating multiple gaming forums in the late 90s and it could get pretty rambunctious back then between individuals and clans just as it does now. The difference now that I perceive anyhow is how interconnected & digitized everything has become. An attack on an individual or organization can go so much deeper and be so much more destructive vs ddosing a mail server or someones website or box or whatever. We all survived that. That web and this web are two entirely different animals. The opportunity to do damage is magnitudes greater now - from professional to monetary/income/savings to personal/cultural stigma, the opportunity to truly destroy large parts of an individuals life is so much greater now; if for no other reason other than everyone's elses lives have now grown into the digital sphere and with that it's relevance, importance thus impact. Anyways, this thread is as political as I have ever gotten on this forum as I also value a peaceful place to go for such thoughtful tinkering. So while I disagree completely in creating safe spaces for young people at the cost of an open adult sphere built by adults primarily for adults, I do value focused & peaceful dialog & accept fully that this forum does not have a political subforum and for a very specific reason.
 
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JDW

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It's important that we simply understand offenses come and we ought not to overreact to them. When forums over-react, we get an ever-growing draconian set of rules that keep members in fear of an iron fist. Tinker Different hasn't become that, and I for one am here to ensure it doesn't ever become that. TinkerDifferent was founded to get away from that, actually.

The reason we're even talking about this is because this is the Soap Box and General Chat which affords everyone a place to discuss things other than our geeky hobby, if we like. Even so, TinkerDifferent was established with restrictions on talk pertaining to Religion and Politics. I myself voted for that guideline to be in place, simply because we don't want the forum dominated with it. My previous post which spoke about my time in the 80's speaking on those topics is a memory from the past that I am not trying to reinstate here. It was fine back then, on that BBS, but it doesn't have a place here on TinkerDifferent.

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Now sit back, relax, and enjoy TinkerDifferent!
 

retr01

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About search engines, as pointed out by @Bolkonskij, I find it interesting that Wiby strives to be compatible with vintage computers. Hmmm. I noticed Wiby says:

In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were personally interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn't great at finding them, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well; but finding things you didn't know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today's web.
The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet. In addition, Wiby helps vintage computers to continue browsing the web, as pages indexed are more suitable for their performance.

 

retr01

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For example, with Wiby, I found this new directory that started this year for vintage computers that I otherwise probably would never find with Google or DuckGoGo. :D


It even listed @Bolkonskij's site. :)
 
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JDW

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For example, with Wiby, I found this new directory that started this year for vintage computers that I otherwise probably would never find with Google or DuckGoGo. :D


It even listed @Bolkonskij's site. :)
Very interesting. Thanks for posting. I spotted a link to the Macintosh Garden Forum on that Directory just now. Funny, despite my having used the Garden all these years, I'd never really noticed their forum! 😅 Lots of other great links in there too, including SE/30 Forever.

Anyway, getting back to the open post and what we miss about "the good old days," I remember the America Online days where many users said they preferred the service over the open internet because they felt AOL filtered out all the danger and cruft. So there were, even back in those days, those who preferred a more sheltered internet experience. I used AOL and thought it was interesting, but the bare naked internet opened so many new doors and experiences, both good and bad. Sometimes you just have to eat the meat and spit out the bones! :)
 

retr01

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Very interesting. Thanks for posting. I spotted a link to the Macintosh Garden Forum on that Directory just now. Funny, despite my having used the Garden all these years, I'd never really noticed their forum! 😅 Lots of other great links in there too, including SE/30 Forever.

Yeah, the SE/30 Forever is nice! I wonder if TinkerDifferent could have an alternative for older Macs and other vintage computers. Hmmm. :unsure:

Anyway, getting back to the open post and what we miss about "the good old days," I remember the America Online days where many users said they preferred the service over the open internet because they felt AOL filtered out all the danger and cruft. So there were, even back in those days, those who preferred a more sheltered internet experience. I used AOL and thought it was interesting, but the bare naked internet opened so many new doors and experiences, both good and bad. Sometimes you just have to eat the meat and spit out the bones! :)

Yep! Back in the day, I was in college after high school, and I had a Digital VMS-VAX terminal on my desk in my dorm room. It was connected to the Internet through the university backbone to the ARPANET / Internet backbone, which I linked to various sites by telnetting. :geek:
 

Eric's Edge

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I long for those days as well. They turned the "information superhighway" into an commercialized sales highway. Let's remember the original idea - making information accessible to everyone, by everyone, regardless of their location, education etc.

That battle has been lost, it's now a semi-automatic promotional trip which tracks you in ways that makes spying in former eastern bloc dictatorships look like a children's birthday party.

The "old style" web is still there. The problem isn't its existence, the problem is to find those lovely pages of individuals. The big search engines aren't too dumb to find them, they don't want to find them. They like brands. Brands mean money. That's what the whole thing is about. Hence no more "fan pages", "personal websites" and the like on the search result pages.

My favorite for finding pages is the search engine wiby.org. Different from The Old Net it's not an archive of long-gone pages with missing images and functionality. It's a search engine for uncommercialized pages still online. Since its discovery, I've spent many evenings visiting random pages on my Power Mac 8600 and learning stuff I never thought I'd want to learn.

Apart from free speech, that was another beauty of the original www. It brought me new insights, new ideas, ultimately it made me a better human being.

I've learnt about Nuclear Power, about a ICU nurse looking back and laughed about Cats that look like Hitler. I even discovered a great tech blog like Cheapskate's Guide.

Guys, it's up to us to recreate what we lost! Who if not we "nerds"?

Get off Google, get off Facebook, get off Discord! Yes, YOU CAN. I'm not using any of them anymore and I was heavily invested. If I can do, you can too!

Start coding your own personal website. Heck, you can even do that for fun on your old Performa! Share about what you care and what you do. Submit it to wiby. Spread the word. Let's build our www back. Be a creator again, not a consumer!
THIS^^^

I miss the early days when I worked at a small consulting company and the owners asked us "who knows how to create web pages?". None of us really did. At least not dynamically generated web sites, but a few of us knew how to use markup languages. Our first web sites sucked AND it was fun!

I have a blog, post on twitter, reddit, etc. Definitely not the same. I have a growing desire to build a web server and host a personal web site like I used to back in the 90's.

Thanks for the push.
 
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wottle

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THIS^^^

I miss the early days when I worked at a small consulting company and the owners asked us "who knows how to create web pages?". None of us really did. At least not dynamically generated web sites, but a few of us knew how to use markup languages. Our first web sites sucked AND it was fun!

I have a blog, post on twitter, reddit, etc. Definitely not the same. I have a growing desire to build a web server and host a personal web site like I used to back in the 90's.

Thanks for the push.
I agree. The one part of personally hosts sites, however, is that often they are not maintained. Someone stops paying the DNS registration fees, doesn't keep their dynamic DNS entries updated. And when that happens we can lose a wealth of (sometimes unique) knowledge. The Wayback machine can help, but if often doesn't have everything. And stuff can be hard to find. It's certainly a tough balance, but I do believe we need persistent, funded systems that can house information that will help others in the future. I can't imagine trying to do some of the restoration work without the information on here, YouTube, and other forums.