@nafnlaus @bontchev @hitsuyonai

I'm distinguishing between the "web," the "world wide web" of HTTP stuff, and the Internet more generally, which supports, and supported, many other kinds of standards-based communication. You appear to be saying that the early Internet was crap, and we're viewing it through rosy glasses. I would counter that it was not crap, it was actually quite pleasant, though on almost unrecognizably different terms. There weren't spam filters in the early Internet, because there wasn't spam on the early Internet. Finger worked because nobody cared whether someone knew that they were logged in, because that wasn't some kind of privacy violation, because we weren't thinking in those terms yet. There weren't "confirmation emails" because there wasn't a second-class of "unconfirmed" citizens.

The technology was simple, it didn't have a polished user interface, compiling cnews was a pain in the ass, there weren't search engines, because there wasn't an expectation that arbitrary information would be available online... you discovered things by word of mouth, and you were surprised and charmed to find them. Snoopy calendars!

It was a different time, the challenges were different ones, it's very difficult to make meaningful comparisons between the Internet of 1990 and the Internet of 2024. But in 1990, nobody's personal information was being sold, and nobody's thermostat was live-streaming video of the inside of their house, and nobody's vote was being manipulated by Russians and Facebook for pennies. And people weren't spending all day doomscrolling. Overall, I think it was a lot healthier.