The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore

It looks like it starts with: >I was born in the late 1990s >2001: The Family Computer I was both in 1975 and my first experience with the Internet was in 1991 when I was 16. I thought it was amazing. There were Usenet forums for thousands of topics and places where nerds could talk about stuff from bands to TV shows to programming languages. There was no graphical World Wide Web (unless you worked at CERN) We had to use Archie to find an FTP site and download a file based on the name. Does that Internet exist anymore? Well Usenet is still around but since 2000 it is mostly spam or for sharing files now. Then the author says: > 2012: When Everything Started Changing I think everything changed when Eternal September happened. When I first got on Usenet the older students told me to lurk for a month and always read the FAQ before asking a question. Then I started seeing all these annoying posts from people ending in @aol.com and that was when the Internet and Usenet really started to change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Born in 89, I always feel nostalgic seeing screenshots of Windows 95. It brings back a time of novelty, exploration, and freedom. And what a ride it's been. It's a bit of a shame it went that deep. What started as a fun new technology seems to have turned into a vortex that just absorbed everything (attention spans, social skills, overall IQ) and everyone (we're now more alone and isolated behind screens), save for the few who were smart enough to protect themselves. I wonder how things would've turned out if internet had stayed a place for fun, exploration, and freedom.

The old internet is still there, people just choose to use the modern services of the internet instead. I was around in the 90's and remember very well usenet,irc and gopher sites. FTP'ing text files to a remote folder and then running weird perl scripts via telnet to refresh a website. You can still go down memory lane but you quickly realize you are romanticizing a past that did its time. I pretty much stay away from the worst of social media and the internet is a fairly calm place for me and a tool I wouldn't give back.

Things we don't have to worry about anymore: 10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers... Your Windows 98 machine being taken over by viruses minutes after booting up Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere! Adware infesting your system. WeatherBug, HotBar, BonziBuddy, Ask Jeeves, Gator, you'd have half your screen taken up by add-on toolbars in your browser. Your system crashing at least once a day. Compared to the 16-bit days, system crashes are rare. Terrible streaming. Nothing like RealPlayer on a modem, where it sounded like a clock radio placed deep inside a steel 55 gallon drum. Laptop battery life that was measured in minutes. If you had more than 2 hours of battery life...

This bit feels naive, in 2007: > While there may have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable - they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics, users' fun, and curiosity. 2007 places us well into World of Warcraft territory. Online games were already a juggernaut and highly profitable.