I live in a kitty-litter box called the internet.

I love my country. But I have been killed by it's education and media.

I keep trying to bring myself back to life through ATS etc.

But even the internet isn't the same anymore now is it?

I got to blogger.com and get 2 options "start your own!" or leave.

Where is my option to search content directly or through categories.

No. I can either encapsulate myself in my own world or search others through a randomized 'next blog' function. an artificial barrier between me and strangers.

I help a friend who has some readers on his blog set up an rss feeder that goes through digg.

I use my own account to find his content. No where. I use a trick, after he give me his password to digg his content by leaving windows open for the content I cant' find through search. Now his content has 2 diggs. I search with my own profile through the 'section' that is supposed to list his content. His blog listing with 2 is not listed, but plenty of onion and cnn articles with only 1 are listed.

remember when chat existed? not just here on ats but for the masses? when i was 12 i would get on yahoo chat every saturday and start a "fans of kids in the hall" room. I would get easily 20 members throughout the day and enjoy discussing and trading pictures and stories of our favorite sketches. if i did that today, i'd be inundated with sex bots.

remember geocities? i used geocities for content for my 8th grade project on robots. it was easy to find content because everything was accessible through a 'topic' chain. yea, try blogger now. oh wait. .... can't do that there.

Is our own propensity to look inward instead of out to community destroying these things or is the hijacking of these things turning us inward?

Are we creating sociopaths. Are we killing community. What happened to my old internet. Something is killing it. Please tell me I'm just ignorant.

Please tell me that something between now and then has made me too busy to find the 'newest thing' and those old outlets still exist under new names. All i see now is closed 'communities'....AN OXYMORON.

Give me back the old days when we were building knowledge anew with all its pit falls.

THIS NEW LEGITIMACY IS KILLING WHAT I CAME TO LOVE

remember when numa-numa guy was viral? what is viral today?

THE MUPPETS? LADY GAGA? WHICH NEW CORPORATE CREATION IS GOING VIRAL TODAY????

I hate it. Someone has hijacked the internet. Its over. Game over. Screw this.

How about you go outside and realize the internet can only take you so far.

reply to post by Socratic Method


I live 90% of my life outside. I have a perfectly good life. But the promise the early internet offered is dead. I'm looking for more not less. This is part of the reason i'll never start a blog or waste my time creating content for online. this is a sad thing, no? you have to admit we've lost something. an opportunity mostly.

reply to post by snusfanatic


I wonder what people did before the internet, they were just fine.

You are just being dramatic, although the internet will be getting censored real soon so stay tuned.

reply to post by Socratic Method


the people lived just fine before the internet. and the internet for a time showed great opportunity. who doesn't love opportunity? people lived just fine before automobiles too. something that worked a certain way to provide openness during my child hood has become a closed way to recreate real-life online. that's not dramatic, that's just the sad truth.

what do you mean censored real soon? i think it's already been effectively censored but i'd love to know what you mean. i'm interested.

OBAMA PRESSURES FOR ISP'S TO CENSOR WEBSITES

"We will promote new tools of communication so people are empowered to connect with one another and, in repressive societies, to do so with security. We will support a free and open Internet, so individuals have the information to make up their own minds. And it is time to embrace and effectively monitor norms that advance the rights of civil society and guarantee its expansion within and across borders."- Barack Obama

reply to post by Socratic Method


jesus. newspeak here we come. thanks for that link. i'm sending this to everyone i know.

However, as we have documented, material that the DoJ considers “unlawful” and even a potential red flag for terrorism includes Tea Party literature posted on public bulletin boards, as well as copies of the “Obama Joker” poster.

even if you hate the tea-party and joker poster this should frighten you as an american.

reply to post by snusfanatic

Oh I know what you're talking about brother and it was bound to happen. You shouldn't even be surprised. The internet started dieying long before coorporations "high-jacked it". It should've been a formidable tool of communication but you know how the story goes with humans.

Give them tools to liberate themeselves and they'll use it to self-destruct. And of course, it's always somebody else fault.

I also meant to say that, among the few gems that I’ve discovered, the internet has also unveiled to me a level of human ignorance and psychopathic behaviors I didn’t know existed although it is just a reflection of society.

Your concerns are simply well-stated and deserves stars and flags though!

reply to post by Exv8densez


I'm not sure if it's a matter of being "someone else's fault". people are moving away from digg to reddit because of the bs system digg has going on. there is a demand for openness and each new 'big thing' thrives on that demand before selling out and sending the people elsewhere. i've often thought that we should set up an INTERNET2 . a kind of constitutional internet that starts from the ground up with rules to leave every thing open.

this could be done as a network within the current internet so that people can escape into the non-pornography, yet open internet2 while still being within intnernet one. kind of a closed network of what it was like for a small amount of time.

reply to post by snusfanatic

Well, I'm afraid what you're suggesting here is web “separatism” or protectionism which reeks demand for a level of control and regulation if you don't want it to become like mainstream internet. How do you know that the same bs digg system base is not already entrenched in a closed network? It’s not looking at the sources of the problem here.

reply to post by Exv8densez


it might become that, but if a small group takes control of the closed system and turns against its philosophy then the remaining dienfranchised users will be able to make a new internet 3.

its like the united states. we have our constitution that should theoretically keep the gov in check forever. but even the founders recognized that sometimes a revolution would be necessary to start over.

internet 2 would be a constitutional internet that would be able to be restarted anew over and over when the last one failed.

1998:

We got internet for the first time.

Used to use mIRC on xnet, which is history.

Met heaps of people this way, we used to arrange parties where there would be 30 people and no gatecrashers.

You didn't even think of telling the entire world what you were doing every hour.

The internet used to be a resource, now it is like an eternal advertisement.

Hotbot and Anzwers used to be the 2 best search engines.

Could think of heaps more...

MM

reply to post by MissMegs


love that flash back. i was only 2 in 1988. but i remember the internet of 1998 and it was much more free than today. maybe this is a brave new world model. maybe the lack of freedom is a byproduct of our decision to advertise ourselves all the time. i'd love to hear more of your stories from the early 1990s late 80s. . i'm interested. i'm younger but the change i've seen is disturbing enough.