@Essjax "No, not you, Barry" 🤣

@BerLinguistin Thanks - I'm going to give that a crack

@smitty FANTASTIC - what a skill to have to keep going though all this - and so many changes you'll have seen too. Like, from the BEGINNING OF INTERNET TIME

@smitty OMG this convo reminds me that when I arrived in NZ in 2005, the shared flat I was in was still using dial-up internet. 2005! We had to take turns with it and we had time limits. And mobile data was so expensive and crappy coverage, I had to go to internet cafes to stay in touch with folks outside of NZ. Which was everyone. I didn't know anyone here then. WOW

@smitty Crikey - yeah, I missed the whole BBS thing mostly. But I remember AOL arriving in the UK in the midst of trying to build a walled garden around all that (if I remember correctly). They got burned.

@smitty Too true, email you can disaggregate to a large extent. But so many people don't because it's easy. And hence the training wheels required for Mastodon. many people have never experienced an ecosystem like this before. I did for decades, but haven't in a long time, and I'm REALLY rusty. Heck knows what others feel like...

@smitty I also lost about 6 months of my life to #undernet on IRC on the @cern server in 1992

@smitty I remember back when we pushed hard against walled gardens. And then the rise of Facebook and Gmail meant that both email and the web became synonymous with just these two things. And mobile service providers even offered free data to access them in exchange for a cut of the revenue. Still do. I am v new here, but I used to belong to a microblogging service called Phlog, back in 2003. I was user #3. What a ride! https://twitter.com/alanb/status/1488754580100116481?s=20&t=OXA_nJPHw7lze3-EFOv8NA

@smitty hell yeh