Early 2000s were peak of humanity

meerita

I think the peak internet experience was blogging. When social networks and social media came along, the decline started happening fast, and I began to see it that way. I was genuinely excited when the iPhone 2G came out, but then that excitement faded, and I quit all social stuff. I still feel nostalgic for the early days of the internet, when people and communities were truly connected.

mdlxxv

Ah, yes. 9/11. The "war on terror". "Peak of humanity", indeed.

ashleyn

I kinda feel like many might be biased to view the era of their own youth as the peak of humanity.

vegnus

Explain how there was "kind of" instant messengers. AIM had already been out for years at that point

mrkpdl

I think I agree with the premise of this. I miss when there were limits on our time with the web each day. I miss not being expected to be up to speed. I really miss magazines. Etc. Windows XP/Panther felt capable enough. If we could go back I think turn by turn navigation would be the hardest thing to give up.

giaour

I don’t know the author’s age but suspect this is an entry in the “<my teenage years/early twenties> were the peak of humanity” genre.

kaon_2

Indeed go ask anybody in China, India, North-Africa, or Eastern Europe. I am sure they will tell you things were better back then. Oh wait. Seems like the author never read Hans Rosling's Factfulness. Big recommendation for anyone out there who hasn't yet. If you have find yourself having a bleak outlook, this book is an antidote: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34890015-factfulness

mdrzn

I can't stand. When people type like this. New line after every dot. Even when not necessary. Ultra short sentences. I guess it's "cool"?

stetrain

> Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about.

zecg

As if it's mandated now to have social networks on your smartphone. I uninstalled anything owned by Zuckerberg or fucking Spez, I use only Signal for chat and Openstreetmap with offline vector maps for navigation. I have no tiktok or forever-scrolling apps.

titzer

Tech is the way it is because Big Tech wants it to be. Social media is engineered to be the most profitable for the big corporations who run the attention economy which incidentally is a surveillance and content exploitation economy hosting too many narcissists yammering for attention. The software world is several stages of enshittification deep, and yet we're awash in incredible hardware that would be mind-blowing if we weren't so constantly distracted with how much noise and bother the software makes.

bluecheese452

Another thing not mentioned is that not everyone had a camera 24/7. You could act silly without fear that one minor fuckup would haunt you the rest of your life.

colonelpopcorn

Isn't this the central conceit behind "The Matrix"? lol

slackfan

And people were yapping away on their phones while driving and crashing into trees. I remember it too. It wasn't that rosy.

ethagnawl

The author hints at _the end of ownership_ when talking about physical media but I think that's been a significant regression worth emphasizing. There have been countless stories about people losing access to their favorite movie when streaming service's licensing agreement expires, Amazon removing books from their Kindle library for ... reasons, Sony moving to digital-only PlayStation releases, etc. These examples are annoying and mostly hinder access to content but there's also the legacy element (what do my children inherit? My Steam account? Some sampler app I used to make music instead of analog hardware?), the inability to share books or music with friends and family, the surveillance aspects, etc. This class of issues has also started to bleed over into The Real World, as companies no longer sell you dumb appliances but a license (which they can terminate) to use, for example, a computer on wheels _in the ways that they see fit_.

andrewla

I find this way of thinking to be almost alien. There's nothing here that I would want to go back to. You could not give me enough money that I would trade down to a 2000-era cell phone from my current phone. "Technology was a tool, not a lifestyle" -- well, guess what! It's still just a tool, not a lifestyle. I'm shitposting here instead of on slashdot, big whoop. My lifestyle is completely unrelated to this. The "physical world"? What if I want to listen to a song that I heard on the radio the other day, or that I heard playing in a store or something, or that someone told me about? I can't just "pop a CD in the player", there's a whole thing where I have to literally purchase the music from a store that sells music. How is that possibly better than the world where I can just pull up the album and play it? Pop in a DVD? Are you insane? "There was a very obvious boundary between being online and being offline. Today that boundary basically doesn't exist. You wake up online. You work online. You eat while watching something online. You walk while listening to something online. You go to bed while scrolling online." So ... maybe the "work online" thing applies. But none of the others do. Maybe the listening while walking too; but I had a crazy thing called a "walkman" (I'm old) and "ipod" (but not that old) back in the day too. I guess circa 2000 I might have had an mp3 player. But the others I opt out of because I don't want to. It's easy ... just don't do that? "Social media" -- I absolutely hate this term because it combines two unrelated things; friend networks and user-generated content. Most of my friend networks have abandoned online social media almost entirely, and I in turn will almost never use it. User-generated content is fun but I'm a lurker and a consumer, I have no hopes or dreams of becoming an "influencer" or "going viral" or whatever. I understand that for some people that is a dream, like being a rock star or a movie star was when I was younger, but I simply opt out of this and it doesn't affect my life. I could go on and on. I simply don't understand how the author finds themselves in this bind where they are "forced" to use technology they don't want to use. Just ... don't use it.

glimshe

In my opinion, it was early 90s. In my parent's opinion, it was early 60s. I wonder what my grandparents thought...

tclover

Depends on how you define humanity