https://medium.com/@keatontech/the-internet-is-too-damn-big-87596940d451
"In the beginning, the internet resembled a quaint village where everybody knew
your name. It was largely self-governing and self-policing, with its own norms
and customs. Like many insular communities it struggled with, and feared,
immigration. Every September a new crop of college freshmen would get their
first computers and briefly overrun the village before eventually getting
assimilated into its culture.
As computers became more prevalent, Septembers got longer. Finally, in 1993,
September never ended. People from all over the world were joining all the
time, ceaselessly, bringing their own tastes and expectations to the nascent
community. The internet became a diverse city. It developed a seedy underbelly,
a hipster neighborhood, contentious politics, content moderators, culture wars.
Some early internet users bemoaned the loss of their nerdy subculture. Others
were more optimistic. It seemed likely that the internet would make the world
smaller and kick off an era of global cooperation and innovation.
The reality has been much more of a mixed bag. The early utopian dreams of the
internet — that it would be a virtual Library of Alexandria, a Melting Pot, a
conduit for World Peace — have only
sort of come to pass.
There is no technical reason for these shortcomings, the computer network that
underlies the internet is fully capable of connecting any of over 5 billion
people together. The
human network, on the other hand, hasn’t scaled so
well."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
