Shoq 🌿Dec 11, 2022

What drove the internet in the 90s and 00s was that it was so cool to be doing good shit with it. Social media was like a giant manure dump all over that culture. We've never recovered.

The Fediverse and the death of Twitter promise a rebirth of that culture, if we don't let the cool kids and a lazy press bury the public in vapid bullshit again.

We wasted 16 goddamn years enduring Facebook and Twitter. In the end, they were both toxic and regressive. Can we please not go back there? Please?

Show threadCassandrichDec 11, 2022
@shoq Can we please also not idealize a mythical past? This is a fundamentally conservative worldview and there was no time in history when anyone but the privileged enjoyed a mythical golden age. Yes Twitter was wielded to do a lot of bad things but it was also instrumental in speaking truth to power and making it so the privileged couldn't ignore injustices they otherwise would have.
Show threadCassandrichDec 11, 2022
@shoq We should be learning from the good and the bad to create systems that will push us into a better world not trying to go back to an imagined better time.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 11, 2022
@dalias I'm not big on nostalgia, but objectively, it was a better time. Software was erupting everywhere, and big commerce hadn't gobbled everything in sight yet.
Show threadProjectFearlessnessDec 12, 2022
@shoq @dalias
If you want to truly look at this era objectively, you should look at how many people worldwide had access to computers and the internet. The 90's was only a golden era of computing to those few who could afford to be there.
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 12, 2022

@ProjectFearlessness @dalias

Yes, but that's true of anything new. You can't fault early adopters for being early adopters.
There are millions who still can't afford internet access NOW. But back then, the adopters at least cared about that. Now, very few do. I resent that inherent selfishness.

Show threadCassandrichDec 12, 2022

@shoq @ProjectFearlessness LMAO no. The gamers mocked HPBs. The IRC channels banned and servers klined residential ISP IP blocks available to ordinary ppl. Etc. etc.

Even before you get to things like race and gender, 90s internet was not at all inclusive or welcoming.

Show threadCassandrich
@shoq @ProjectFearlessness The early internet was not much better than the shallow tech libertarianism of today. Folks with privilege demanding the right to do anything they want, but no care for making a better world for everyone, and screw anyone who didn't have the same needs and interests as themselves.
Dec 12, 2022 at 8:03pmWeb
Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 12, 2022
@dalias @ProjectFearlessness I think we had different experiences. Sure, there were libertarians, or characters like RMS insisting on free everything (and who seem more prescient now than he did then), but the 00s also saw people like @davew giving away great software and ideas just because he wanted to. His RSS, OPML (and Podcasting) didn't come from corporations milking culture. It came from humans putting out for their culture. Because they could.
Show threadDave Winer ☕️Dec 12, 2022

@shoq @dalias @ProjectFearlessness

help us do a generational transfer. this is probably going to be my last rodeo, these moments don't come that often. i just want to show people how to do this, so the process can continue.

we have to do for text what we did for podcasting.

i think that's the best way to phrase the idea so it makes sense in 2022.

Show threadShoq 🌿Dec 12, 2022

@davew @dalias @ProjectFearlessness

Dave, this may be one of the most important (and nicest) posts I ever seen on social media. And I agree 1000%.

If we all practiced what you're preaching here, the world would look very different (and much more hopeful) than it does to so many now.