"For seemingly no reason at all, thousands of people were telling stories about themselves, unguarded even against the background toxicity of internet comment sections. Many of them used the word “checkpoint.”"
https://longreads.com/2026/02/26/internet-checkpoint-taia777-donkey-kong/
An article from last year that celebrates the 40th anniversary of ".com".
"Four decades ago, the first domain was registered and the initial batch of top-level domains came to be. Nearly a billion domains have been registered since then."
https://www.dotcom.press/history-of-domains
"That's my belief. It just takes a bit of guidance and access to understandable knowledge. That word 'understandable,' it's important. You don't introduce people to website building by using geek-speak. You have to talk human to human..."
Me, teaching my undergrads about early web history.
"By the end of 1994, there were roughly 10,000 websites on the web. It was still early days and most of the websites were quite basic in structure."
Interesting perspective.
"The rush to vilify and eliminate the comment section ignored, as Ben notes, that a subscription to news outlets doesn’t just have to provide access to journalism, it can feature participation in journalism."
Via https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xtg6uhgsy2j7k2a6qtcood2w/post/3mdxqtevkxc2x
"#TheWeb: Everything Is Shifting at Once
What makes this moment disorienting to some, but also exciting, is that multiple systems are changing simultaneously. It’s not just consumption models or discovery mechanisms or economics of the internet. It’s all of them, at the same time, and they’re interconnected.
The #consumption model used to be straightforward. A user goes to a surface, consumes content directly, and synthesizes the information themselves.
Now an AI intermediary does the #synthesis across dozens of surfaces and delivers the answer directly. The user can get what they need (achieve that conversion) without directly visiting the source anymore."
"This shift is gradual, not binary. #Directvisits still happen. #Search still sends traffic. But the proportion is changing, and as AI intermediaries become more capable and more widely used, that proportion will continue to shift. #Publishers whose revenue depends on attention are feeling this now, and it will become more pronounced over time.
#Theweb will continue to change into the future; this isn’t a single switch being flipped, but a #migration."
"In the beginning, the Web was simple. When I first encountered it in early 1993 (working for O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator[...]), there was only one browser for viewing web pages and it ran exclusively on the Unix platform. There were about a dozen tags that made any difference. Designing a web page was a relatively simple task."
"Before TikTok, Tumblr or LiveJournal, before widespread computer ownership or the web itself, trans people were connecting online, allowing them to talk to people like themselves.
For many, this was the first time. The earliest forums offered an invaluable space for people whose innate sense of being trans clashed with the prevailing culture. But there, in cyberspace, they built community and friendships."
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/love-knowledge-frontlines-trans-cyberspace
Stefan Bohacek
Mark A. Rayner
Xamanismo Coletivo
Ecologia Digital
