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…
For me the high point was Fark or maybe Homestar and the low point was obviosuly Facebook... or maybe the end of Democracy.
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.
History repeats
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.
http://endinter.net/
https://youtu.be/_uXtWIg_A7M?si=h0FSN79T5SDoUuGm
https://doctorsensei.com/how-to-get-off-the-internet.html