Interesting how internet boosters in the late 90s/early 2000s told us the internet would revitalize democracy by making it so anyone could publish. I'm not aware of a single cynic who successfully predicted how things actually ended up turning out. Nor have I seen much of an attempt to revisit those early predictions.
RMS has seen our troubles with non-free software as early as in 80s. What he has not predict that the software has find even more cruel way of shipping - disservices which do not even allow the freedom 0.
BTW the statement about democracy is not a lie - everyone knows some big and small revolutions happened after someone's post in social networks. Also such things as anonymous news sources, torrents and bitcoin has democraticized a whole lot of things in our lives.
Fark and cracked in about 2007 were peak post development, profit motivated Internet. Homestar runner and albino black sheep (shout out to flashback for many fun dmt experiences) in about 2004 was peak fun Internet.
Do you realise we have never had 'democracy' - we have 'representative democracy', a totally different thing. Thousands, perhaps millions of people, vote once every 4-5 years for one person to represent them on thousands of governmental decisions. That person is under no constraints to do what they said to gain your vote either - they can do the exact opposite with no repercussion.
Voting as we have it, is a highly abstract, meta "democracy", with 'the will of the people' effecting a meaningless level of force on the tiller. As per the design.
I remember back in the days the HTTP proxy of Sun Microsystems used to have a similar page when something went wrong. Always tried to find it again, but failed.
I remember when this was new and it was still possible to conceive of the internet as finite. Simpler times. Is it possible to view the internet as finite these days? Is it actually possible to turn out the lights (touch grass) these days?
I was hoping for more… maybe some ending cuts scenes, some recaps of adventures, maybe some cameos from developers… this just seems lazy and like my time/life was a wasted effort…
It was fun while it lasted.
For me the high point was Fark or maybe Homestar and the low point was obviosuly Facebook... or maybe the end of Democracy.
Interesting how internet boosters in the late 90s/early 2000s told us the internet would revitalize democracy by making it so anyone could publish. I'm not aware of a single cynic who successfully predicted how things actually ended up turning out. Nor have I seen much of an attempt to revisit those early predictions.
"AI will democratize education and information access as everyone will have their own personal tutor and librarian!"
History repeats
RMS has seen our troubles with non-free software as early as in 80s. What he has not predict that the software has find even more cruel way of shipping - disservices which do not even allow the freedom 0.
BTW the statement about democracy is not a lie - everyone knows some big and small revolutions happened after someone's post in social networks. Also such things as anonymous news sources, torrents and bitcoin has democraticized a whole lot of things in our lives.
Earth by David Brin and Ender’s Game made some predictions in this area
I vaguely remember “The Nets” in Enders game but not how they functioned. What about Card’s portrayal did you find prescient?
Fark and cracked in about 2007 were peak post development, profit motivated Internet. Homestar runner and albino black sheep (shout out to flashback for many fun dmt experiences) in about 2004 was peak fun Internet.
A good friend of mine, god honest truth, met his now-wife on Fark less than three years ago. Sure is somethin.
The high point was the original useless pages (especially the uselessness of pi.) Its been downhill since then.
Do you realise we have never had 'democracy' - we have 'representative democracy', a totally different thing. Thousands, perhaps millions of people, vote once every 4-5 years for one person to represent them on thousands of governmental decisions. That person is under no constraints to do what they said to gain your vote either - they can do the exact opposite with no repercussion.
Voting as we have it, is a highly abstract, meta "democracy", with 'the will of the people' effecting a meaningless level of force on the tiller. As per the design.
The Internet is a mere 23 PiB according to the graphic. These days you can fit that on just a few racks.
Can even get it in a single rack if you use SSDs
My minimalist version has a better domain name:
http://endinter.net/
Me finishing browsing the final page of the WWW in 1993. "Well, that was fun. Back to IRC."
more or less correct. after that, it's all rehashes of the same material as memes and social nonsense. It's all services, no content
Reminded me of this commercial
https://youtu.be/_uXtWIg_A7M?si=h0FSN79T5SDoUuGm
https://zombo.com !!
Oh but reaching zombo.com is only the beginning. You can do anything on zombo.com!
I remember this used to be www.wwwdotcom.com but it seems the internet lasted longer than that page did.
What year do we predict internet.zip would be downloadable in say one day.
It occurs to me that downloading e.g. llama.cpp kind of is like downloading the whole internet? Or a very lossy-compressed version of it.
October 30th, 1969. After that it started to grow uncontrollably and quickly became unwieldy
Ha ha. I meant the particular snapshotted internet.zip with alleged file size on that site.
With a 100 Gbps connection, it would take 21.3 days, so it needs to get about 21x better than that.
Reminds me of this classic bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
I remember back in the days the HTTP proxy of Sun Microsystems used to have a similar page when something went wrong. Always tried to find it again, but failed.
https://thispageintentionallyleftblank.org/
I remember when this was new and it was still possible to conceive of the internet as finite. Simpler times. Is it possible to view the internet as finite these days? Is it actually possible to turn out the lights (touch grass) these days?
This is up since at least February 2006.
In 6 weeks that'll be 20 years ago.. how did 20 years disappear like that?
omg I haven't seen this in years! :D
you came back? keep planting trees!
Now that we've reached the end of the Internet, enjoy instructions on how to get OFF the Internet.
https://doctorsensei.com/how-to-get-off-the-internet.html
I was hoping for more… maybe some ending cuts scenes, some recaps of adventures, maybe some cameos from developers… this just seems lazy and like my time/life was a wasted effort…
The developers never thought you'd make it this far.
I mean, finally.
Geez ... that's a heckuvalotta pron consumption ...