My friend Pat and I talk a few times a week, and probably text each other almost every day. Pat still lives in the general area of where we grew up, and I now live in Florida. Often our conversations turn to what is going on in the hometown, where Pat makes references to places and events that I no longer remember. That topic, is for another post.
Since we are both approaching 40, I guess it is natural that our conversations often turn to “remember how [insert any topic here] used to be?” Something Pat doesn’t talk much about, but I often bring it up, is how he used to be really big into buying internet addresses, and creating web sites. When I say creating web sites, it wasn’t for a client, he simply put together a website about a topic he was interested in. Some sites were just about him with some pictures and paragraphs about what he is interested in. Remember, this was before MySpace or Facebook.
Pat has since mostly moved on from that time of his life. Partially because he now has a family and no longer has spare time to burn, but mostly because nobody really visits web sites for fun anymore. This is in no means backed up by any research, just my own observations.
Since this blog is supposed to be about my memories and the changing of the times, let’s time travel back to the late 80’s to early 90’s and check in with a younger me back in Upstate New York.
I was in no means an anti-social kid. I was mostly outside of the house all of the time, either riding bikes, or hanging out with any of of my friends who lived in the neighborhood. No cell phone, no beeper. You just walked or rode to a friend’s house to see if he was home. If he wasn’t home, you had to come back and check later. It wouldn’t do any good to call him, the phones back then only rang into the house, and you already know he isn’t there. So when you met up with friends, you socialized.
Sometimes if it was raining, too hot outside, or just nighttime and we were bored, we could get onto the computer. I think my friend Josh was the first person I knew that had one. He had a really cool Tandy computer with the coolest program we had at the time:
Prodigy.
There it was. The information superhighway. As far as we knew it anyway. This was awesome. Games to play and you could even interact with other people. Granted it took a few days to find out if your post was even noticed, but that didn’t matter, we only got onto the service every few days at most.
One day, I went over to Josh’s house, and he had something even better:
America Online.
There it was. The REAL information superhighway. Even better then Prodigy. We could talk to other people in real time now. And if memory serves correctly, all for the low low price of $5 an hour. His dad was paying the bill, so that didn’t last long. This is where I learned the lingo: “cya l8r” as in “see you later.” I don’t think this shorthand is even used anymore. Now you have to speak emoji. Emoji… what. the. hell.
Back to the story. You see the pattern here… soon after AOL, I was introduced by Josh to Bulletin Board Systems.
These were usually run by hobbyists at their home, and you would dial into their system. It was basically mini Prodigy. You could download files, e-mail, and play games. Some of them who could have more than one phone line installed had instant chat just like America Online.
The best part was that these were local, generally run by kids our age, and free. Also because of long distance charges (for you youngin’s: if you called anyone that didn’t live basically in your city, it cost extra on the phone bill) you probably went to school with the people on the board.
There it was. The information super- Actually, no. I don’t think we ever mistook this for the information superhighway. Although through some genius ideas (passing messages from hubs to boards) it did actually connect people across the globe. If you wanted to that is. I kept everything local as far as I can remember.
So off to college I go, where the school had an email system based on “telnet,” not web based. But everyone in the school used it so people were starting to figure it out. At the same time, it finally arrived:
The INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY – THE WORLD WIDE WEB:
Yes, that’s it. Not that exciting I know – but at the time, this was amazing. Most websites were not even as complex as this one. But we were finally there. Information was available on many topics. The number of websites and their complexity increased on a daily basis. It took off quickly, and within a few years we were banking and ordering products online more often than not. [As an aside, notice the Christmas theme AOL added to the website above? I’m a big fan of things like changing the theme or decor of a page depending on the time of year. I don’t see it that much anymore. I did it to my blog last Christmas and hopefully I will continue to do so.]
So this takes us into the 2000’s. Web pages are in full bloom, and back to my introduction of this story, Pat buys some .coms, .nets, dot whatevers, and just for fun, puts up some websites. Pat used software to help him build them. He didn’t know any coding, but his websites turned out pretty cool. They were interesting, some had a small following, and they generated conversation. I’m actually trying to get him to bring one of the sites back to life, even though it would most likely have to survive as an app instead.
This was in the time where you could “surf the web” and actually discover new things. I’m not talking educating yourself, but just going to websites to click around and see what it does. Personally, I think this was the “peak” of the internet we all imagined in the 90’s. It was an open forum where the internet seemed to have a personal touch.
There were services that let anybody make a website. Geocities was one that I remember off the top of my head. Even MySpace was basically a personal website space. Geocities is now gone (although due to some great work by internet archivists at Archive Team it has been preserved online). MySpace is still around, but no longer the same type of site it was.
So this brings us back to the question, “Where has the internet gone?” Yes, I am well aware there is still a lot of networked computers running our daily lives. When I ask the question I am asking where has the personality of the internet gone? The internet that I personally miss.
I think there are two answers to my question.
- Smart phones
Does anyone remember .mobi? This was a big deal when it was first announced. The .mobi TLD would be designated for mobile web sites. Read that again: mobile web sites. This was before the smart phone was released. You could use your Treo or your Palm Centro with the stylus and surf the web. Compared to now, it was archaic, but back then, you were still browsing the web.
Then the smartphone comes out and “apps” become popular. At first they were cute, fun programs. I specifically remember the “pouring beer” app and the “cigarette lighter” app for iPod/iPhone. But eventually, apps became more productive. They were basically portals into the website, without having to navigate to the site. Banking apps, radio apps, news apps. You no longer had to open the browser and type in a website address. Corporations began making millions on .99 cent apps, and it became mostly about entertainment, not expressing yourself or coming up with something new in a web browser.
Then the death blow. Facebook arrived.
And it grew.
And grew some more.
Until it has now become almost synonymous with “the internet.”
Think about it. A majority of the general public’s information comes from Facebook. We don’t email our friends anymore. We Facebook message them. Remember those funny emails you would get sent every day? Now they just post to your wall. If you look at the trending section of Facebook, you know what the current events are. Facebook now even asks you if you are okay when a disaster occurs. You know how I found out about the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando? Facebook started alerting my phone telling me my friends who live in Orlando were okay or haven’t responded yet.
Businesses now use it for customer service. They are creating bots to answer questions you may have about the company via their Facebook page. So now instead of searching for a company’s hours on the internet, you can simply Facebook message the company “What time do you close” and the bot will answer.
Let’s face it. Facebook wants to be the internet. It’s a business. I get it. I don’t fault them for that goal. I really don’t.
If one of those earlier online services I mentioned grew to the size of Facebook, I would be saying the same thing. AOL and Prodigy offered news, messaging and information, so what is the difference? There isn’t, other than Facebook grew to the size it is now.
So even though I said Facebook and smartphones are the reason for the internet changing, in my opinion, for the worse, they aren’t the cause.
We are the cause.
We did it. We became a society that has to let people know about every, single, minute, of our lives. The ease of posting photos and opinions has turned us into a one trick pony. We can share, share, share. But I think we have stopped listening and more importantly, creating. Things were just more interesting back when the internet was more than a handful of social media sites.
We’ve settled in. We post memes without fact checking them. Most people just scroll by, sharing them again when they chuckle. Nobody is creating an original experience anymore.
Ironic that this is coming from a guy with a free WordPress account and an off the shelf theme huh? I don’t think so. I think the originality is in the words you are reading right now. I miss the originality. I miss the clunky websites. I miss seeing something different on my screen. I miss seeing an original online experience.
Or… maybe it’s just me.