I think it is more a problem of not caring (especially when not caring will result in social and/or economic reward) rather than not anticipating.
For any technology that is created you can and should anticipate that it will be, literally, weaponized since there are hundreds of thousands of years of precedent for this happening.
How so? Because we could send mail instantly instead of using a stamp and envelope?
Because we could buy stuff without leaving the house?
Because we could read/listen to/watch stuff without paying the people who created it?
That's not to say that the internet in 2000 was without flaws, but I do think on net it was beneficial to humanity.
I can tell you I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am without this, yes.
First because I (/my parents) didn’t have the money, second because of pure geographical access.
I saw movies and shows from countries that would never sell near me, read books that would never be in my country’s libraries, took courses straight from scientists and engineers rather than a thrice translated work…
The barrier of entry was also useful, curiosity is much better fed when you can download a medicine textbook just to check rather than venturing into the library of a university you’re not part of.
That is the one thing the internet did right, spreading culture. It was over when they took boredom from us, that was the big evil.
Or, I can think of something, and find the answer quickly. I can make friends with people (or argue with them) across continents.
Still, there are things that I do miss that were objectively "worse." Like there only being a few dozen channels, and cable TV being less important, so you knew everyone was watching the same thing. There seemed to be more of a shared culture.
You mean innumerate and STEM ignorant politicians manipulated by tech bros high on their own supply financially engineered into existence?
Poverty wages everywhere except tech jobs was intentional. Ignoring the externalities like reliance on sweatshop labor and sacrificing diverse skills development was intentional. Little different than what they are doing with the ICE hiring bonus.
They got employees to go where they wanted; not operating from a diverse playbook: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...
Offshoring the late 90s and 00s was 100% meant to protect Intel, copyright; this isn't anything we did. Broad strokes were gamed out 2 decades ago.
The elder politicians don't want Americans in a position to win. They didn't want the risk of open compute production thriving in America; back in the 00s Napster made the threat to their IP and copyright schemes obvious.
They want political serfdom, fealty to elders delusion about themselves. We did little but follow orders because what choice did we have?
I am not owning this circus.
If you imagine we just got unlucky with the _wrong_ people in power, you haven't yet learned the real lesson, and are doomed to support the entire thing continuing, or being reborn in new form.
I think a lot of people would be tempted by the nostalgia, but would quickly realize how much they'd be giving up.
By most aspects the world of 1990 didn't change that much from today's world, with the exception of having computers in our pockets and some advances in medicine.
I used to work with a guy who would tell me that, except email, life didn’t really change since the 80s. All we did was stick a screen onto everything, whether we needed to or not.
I was only born in the 90s but I mostly agree that far back.
But the internet and technology in general was so much more fun and exciting back then than it is now, IMHO. I'm sure some of my feelings there is nostalgia and youth or lack thereof, but a circa 1995 Socket 7 desktop motherboard could take cpus from Intel, AMD, Cyrix, IDT, and some others, and then there were all the non-pc options; that's a lot of competition and fun. Video game consoles were meaningfully different than each other, instead of the massively consolidated situation we have now. Arcade machines were more capable beyond just having large screens and specialized input devices.
I didn't get on the Internet until ~ 95, but at least for several years after that, it was a community of choice, rather than a place everyone had to assemble. That made interaction special in a lot of ways that are hard to reproduce now.
I could certainly live with larger bid/ask spreads and fractional rather than decimal stock pricing as well as no odd lots and T+3? settlement. Current situation is better, but it's really not a huge deal. I can wait for slow shipping, and call people on the phone to make special orders...
That said, the later generations probably are going to have a more shitty life, because of economic downturn since 2008. I can't even imagine what kind of life my son (5Y) is going to live through whence the cyberpunk world falls.
Everything2 is still around? whoooa, totally forgot about that. Gotta definitely get back into that. That seems like one of those great anti-modern-social-media ideas that the kids might like to learn about.
>If you do phone a friend at 4am to say "I'm down" they take it seriously.
Well, I mean I've never had friends so I can't really say too much about that. But I never really had anyone in my life that would do that so... eh?
> In RL, you can be alone on purpose without seeming antisocial.
>People try to get you to stay "just a little longer" and make you feel wanted.
No one's ever done that for me. Quite the opposite actually. I'm rather repulsive in real life so most people would prefer me away in real life.
> A hug is always nice, but a real, close, body-touching real life hug is … nicer :)
Is it? The two times I've been hugged in my life have been more just uncomfortable.
> You can know for sure that people who are being nice to your face aren't simultaneously bitching behind your back
... my father was praised as being a good man. He was also the same man that grabbed by my hair and violently introduced my face to the kitchen floor. Broke my nose and lip, then made me clean the blood up with my tongue as apology to him for forcing him to hit me. He's flung coins into my face hard enough to cut the skin. Broken coffee mugs over my head.
I don't blame him for doing what he did; I was difficult as a child. But it never really made any sense to me why his peers would praise him for being good when there was so much controversy over just spanking a child vs what happened to me when it seemed perfectly normal to me to get hit with a stick hard enough to bruise for a month afterwards.
Always made me wonder what else someone would hide from strangers.
> You can hear the warmth in the voice that says 'I love you' and see the look in the person's eyes
... This is something I've kind of wanted to rant about for a while. But no. I don't want love in my life. 25 years of my life were spent receiving bruises, cuts, and humiliation because my parents loved me. And I spent 25 years enduring it in silence because I loved them. Because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone.
They're gone now. And I've had more then enough love in my life to say that I want no part of it anymore.
No, I think the quiet of an IRC screen is quite a quite a bit more preferable to outside.
I've never had to go through anything remotely similar.
I'd just want to point out what you've experienced is not love. There may have been some form of love from those people towards you, but the things you've described are not manifestations of that love, they're manifestations of something else.
I hope you can believe me. Sorry if I'm intruding.
My email is on my bio if you ever want to chat in a non-public setting.
bitwize•1h ago