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| 1 | #+date: [2026-06-29 Mon 21:12:00] | |
| 2 | #+title: The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore | |
| 3 | #+description: | |
| 4 | #+slug: internet | |
| 5 | #+filetags: :personal:web: | |
| 6 | #+draft: t | |
| 7 | ||
| 8 | * Introduction | |
| 9 | ||
| 10 | The internet; what can I say? It's the driving force behind nearly the whole | |
| 11 | world today - economies, countries, communities, and more run solely on the | |
| 12 | internet these days. | |
| 13 | ||
| 14 | However, it wasn't always this way. | |
| 15 | ||
| 16 | Once upon a time, the internet didn't even exist. When it did, the internet was | |
| 17 | a *place*. It was a place you went. You selectively chose to visit the internet, | |
| 18 | based on your own free will. | |
| 19 | ||
| 20 | If you wanted to visit a chat room, or perhaps preview a fancy new Flash game, | |
| 21 | you visited the internet for a few minutes in the evening before going back to | |
| 22 | your family or friends. | |
| 23 | ||
| 24 | This has changed dramatically in the last 20-30 years. Today, it's 2026 and | |
| 25 | woven into nearly every part of daily life for the majority of the Earth's | |
| 26 | population. | |
| 27 | ||
| 28 | Let's do a quick checklist and see what requires the internet or becomes tedious | |
| 29 | if we opt not to use the internet (yes, this list is tedious on purpose): | |
| 30 | - Banking | |
| 31 | - Paying bills | |
| 32 | - Taxes | |
| 33 | - Shopping | |
| 34 | - Watching TV or movies | |
| 35 | - Listening to music | |
| 36 | - Reading the news | |
| 37 | - Looking up directions | |
| 38 | - Ordering food | |
| 39 | - Booking travel | |
| 40 | - Messaging friends and family | |
| 41 | - Video calls | |
| 42 | - Playing most modern video games | |
| 43 | - Downloading software updates | |
| 44 | - Activating new devices | |
| 45 | - Backing up photos | |
| 46 | - Storing files | |
| 47 | - Finding a restaurant | |
| 48 | - Reading reviews | |
| 49 | - Checking the weather | |
| 50 | - Looking up a recipe | |
| 51 | - Researching almost anything | |
| 52 | - Applying for a job | |
| 53 | - Remote work | |
| 54 | - School and homework | |
| 55 | - Medical records | |
| 56 | - Scheduling appointments | |
| 57 | - Government services | |
| 58 | - Renewing licenses | |
| 59 | - Filing insurance claims | |
| 60 | - Managing investments | |
| 61 | - Home security cameras | |
| 62 | - Smart home devices | |
| 63 | - Navigation in your car | |
| 64 | - Finding a phone number | |
| 65 | - Dating | |
| 66 | - Selling used items | |
| 67 | - Buying event tickets | |
| 68 | - Boarding a flight | |
| 69 | - Receiving package updates | |
| 70 | - Authentication (2FA) | |
| 71 | - Password management | |
| 72 | - Identity verification | |
| 73 | ||
| 74 | What a list. How fun. I love being absolutely restricted to a specific | |
| 75 | technology or method with little to no options. | |
| 76 | ||
| 77 | Joking aside, this post is my personal reflection of the internet, and perhaps | |
| 78 | tech and life in general, over my lifetime. I was born in the late 1990s, but | |
| 79 | was also born in a rural area of the USA, so I have been privileged to see | |
| 80 | technology evolve from the "my stereo is the highest tech equipment in my house" | |
| 81 | stage to the "I have all of human history in my pocket" stages. | |
| 82 | ||
| 83 | This post is about remembering these moments from my perspective, regardless of | |
| 84 | whether the evolutions have been good or bad. | |
| 85 | ||
| 86 | As you read on, *please* (*PLEASE!*) send me an email if this post sparks a memory | |
| 87 | or you have thoughts. I genuinely enjoy hearing these stories from anyone, and I | |
| 88 | push for you to send me them as you think of them. | |
| 89 | ||
| 90 | * 2001: The Family Computer | |
| 91 | ||
| 92 | The family computer. What a throwback. Perhaps you even had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place][third place]] | |
| 93 | computer you visited. Wherever, whatever that computer was - think of that | |
| 94 | computer as you read this. I will be speaking from my perspective and I hope it | |
| 95 | resounds with someone out there. | |
| 96 | ||
| 97 | I recall coming home from school, getting through required chores, homework, or | |
| 98 | anything else first. Perhaps you had siblings with which you shared the computer | |
| 99 | or the TV. | |
| 100 | ||
| 101 | In my case, we owned an early 2000s Gateway tower PC. A beautiful (read: ugly), | |
| 102 | beige Gateway computer with the spotted cow on it. It sat on a big "oak" hutch, | |
| 103 | with integrated file-compatible drawers and specific spots for your matching | |
| 104 | beige desktop speakers. | |
| 105 | ||
| 106 | #+caption: Gateway Ad from 1992 | |
| 107 | [[https://www.vice.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/1565048739851-image3.png]] | |
| 108 | ||
| 109 | To use the computer, you likely turned on a very heavy CRT monitor. Perhaps it | |
| 110 | even flickered, emitted you a static buzz, or showed a wavy pattern in the | |
| 111 | graphics. This was the epitome of 2000s technology and people loved it. | |
| 112 | ||
| 113 | #+being_quote | |
| 114 | *Side note*: We owned a heavy, wooden CRT TV set from the 1970s or 1980s that hid | |
| 115 | all buttons behind a fake, black "speaker" that you could press to pop open. A | |
| 116 | decade or two after we had tossed this TV into our barn for disposal, my brother | |
| 117 | an I took turns hitting the glass screen it as hard as we could with a baseball | |
| 118 | bat. | |
| 119 | ||
| 120 | It never left a mark, regardless of how hard we hit it. Why don't we produce | |
| 121 | that quality anymore? | |
| 122 | #+end_quote | |
| 123 | ||
| 124 | If you wanted to use the computer, you had to press a very heavy, circular | |
| 125 | button that would emit a memorable CLUNK as you engaged the button within the | |
| 126 | PC. This would result in an airplane level of whirring while it used maybe a few | |
| 127 | GB of memory and hard drive storage to boot up [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95][Windows 95]]. | |
| 128 | ||
| 129 | #+caption: Windows 95 Desktop | |
| 130 | [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at_first_run.png]] | |
| 131 | ||
| 132 | At this point, the world was your oyster. You could do so many things that | |
| 133 | humans throughout history couldn't do: | |
| 134 | - Open multiple programs *at the same time*. Scientists were baffled. | |
| 135 | - Minimize a window, then bring it back later. Pure sorcery. | |
| 136 | - Move files by dragging them with your mouse. We truly lived in the future. | |
| 137 | - Change the color of every pixel in *Paint*. Michelangelo could never. | |
| 138 | - Hear your speakers make a loud POP every time Windows started. Reassuring. | |
| 139 | - Watch a progress bar slowly fill from left to right while estimating "time to | |
| 140 | complete" at 800 years. Entertainment for the whole family. | |
| 141 | - Crash the entire computer because you opened one too many programs. Unlimited | |
| 142 | power comes with responsibility. | |
| 143 | ||
| 144 | If you were luckier than I was, you also had access to the *INTERNET* at this | |
| 145 | point. The cyberspace where you transmitted your energy through hyperwaves to | |
| 146 | digital ends of the earth (i.e., sent a message to a stranger). | |
| 147 | ||
| 148 | My family had a dial-up modem until the mid-2000s, so I was rarely to use the | |
| 149 | internet at this point. The extent of my experience spanned between our family | |
| 150 | computer (used for games, documents, and wasting time exploring every single | |
| 151 | menu and application available in Windows) and the church computer lab | |
| 152 | (containing even older computers, somehow). | |
| 153 | ||
| 154 | At this point, there was no ritual to the internet or even to the computer | |
| 155 | itself. The computer was a tool used for specific tasks, such as my mother | |
| 156 | designing pamphlets in some obscure program for printing, or for fun. | |
| 157 | ||
| 158 | Often times, you would sit down with no particular destination. You were | |
| 159 | *exploring*. I use that word specifically because it's how I truly felt. Whenever | |
| 160 | I turned on a computer, I was exploring a digital universe that had not been | |
| 161 | charted before. | |
| 162 | ||
| 163 | At this point, the internet was a distinct place you visited. Or, could ignore. | |
| 164 | If you didn't like computers or the internet, no worries. You could ignore it as | |
| 165 | much as you'd like. | |
| 166 | ||
| 167 | * 2004: Exploring the Web | |
| 168 | ||
| 169 | The internet stopped feeling like a software. | |
| 170 | ||
| 171 | It became its own world. | |
| 172 | ||
| 173 | This is the point in my life where the internet became real. I wasn't a pioneer | |
| 174 | by any means, unless we're talking about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(1971_video_game)][The Oregon Trail]], but I was willing to | |
| 175 | test and brute force any system through sheer curiosity, from a very early age. | |
| 176 | ||
| 177 | At this time, we launched [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer][Internet Explorer]] and loaded up your favorite search | |
| 178 | engine. Perhaps it was Yahoo!, Altavista, MSN, Google, or something else. | |
| 179 | ||
| 180 | This was probably your home page, your default search engine in the browser, and | |
| 181 | had an annoying toolbar installed on top of the browser itself. If you were | |
| 182 | silly enough (like me), you had numerous toolbars that sacrificed valuable | |
| 183 | screen space for the sake of /nothing/. | |
| 184 | ||
| 185 | Suddenly, you could find almost anything ever uploaded to the internet. Some | |
| 186 | options could be: | |
| 187 | - A walkthrough for the level you were stuck on. | |
| 188 | - A fan site dedicated to your favorite TV show. | |
| 189 | - A forum with 12 members arguing about phreaking. | |
| 190 | - A Flash game that somehow consumed your entire afternoon. | |
| 191 | - Someone's personal blog documenting their life in excruciating detail. | |
| 192 | ||
| 193 | More than this, the internet always felt *enormous* at this stage. No matter how | |
| 194 | much you explored, searched, or cataloged, you never had the full image. The | |
| 195 | internet was endless, borderless, and expansive. There was always a new rabbit | |
| 196 | hole waiting for you. Even if you had to watch every image slowly appear one | |
| 197 | horizontal line at a time. | |
| 198 | ||
| 199 | Before moving on to the next section, do you remember the [[https://www.spacejam.com/1996/][1996 SpaceJame | |
| 200 | website]]? What a modern marvel. Honestly one of the world's wonders. | |
| 201 | ||
| 202 | * 2007: Living There | |
| 203 | ||
| 204 | Here we are. The part of this post I recall most vividly. The mid-2000s were a | |
| 205 | phenomenal time in my personal history, as they were my transformative years. As | |
| 206 | it relates to computing and the internet, this means that the mid-2000s were the | |
| 207 | years of my utmost exploration, exploitation, and emancipation. | |
| 208 | ||
| 209 | Where do I even start? Perhaps we start with the state of the internet and what | |
| 210 | exactly was available online. Perhaps this is triggering for certain readers, | |
| 211 | and I apologize if it is, but it is the way the internet was at the time. | |
| 212 | ||
| 213 | If you wanted to see gruesome videos of executions, suicides, or the pain | |
| 214 | olympics, all it took was a single search and your search engine would happily | |
| 215 | return any results relevant to the words you typed. | |
| 216 | ||
| 217 | If you wanted to share information over the internet at this point, you probably | |
| 218 | had an email from a site like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or your ISP | |
| 219 | (Roadrunner, anyone?). Additionally, at this point, webmail clients were | |
| 220 | extremely popular and most users would launch the webmail clients from their | |
| 221 | providers to participate in email. | |
| 222 | ||
| 223 | Those of us who were /cool/ used things like MSN Messenger, AIM, etc. to chat | |
| 224 | quickly without having to use an email. You could even use little pictures that | |
| 225 | provided emotional reactions for you! Oh my goodness, what a time. | |
| 226 | ||
| 227 | #+caption: MSN Messenger Emoticons | |
| 228 | [[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20260627-internet/msn_emojis.webp]] | |
| 229 | ||
| 230 | Beyond chatting, the next big thing coming in the digital space was gaming. At | |
| 231 | this time, it was seen as perhaps a silly side-hobby for some. While there may | |
| 232 | have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable - | |
| 233 | they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics, | |
| 234 | users' fun, and curiosity. | |
| 235 | ||
| 236 | Games and game companies like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape][Runescape]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniclip][Miniclip]] (8 Ball Pool, Agar.io, Doodle | |
| 237 | Army), [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Penguin][Club Penguin]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard101][Wizards 101]], and more dominated the scene in the mid-2000s. | |
| 238 | ||
| 239 | Beyond gaming, this was the age of users learning how to launch their own blogs, | |
| 240 | vlogs, websites, and more. | |
| 241 | ||
| 242 | For example, let's look at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities][GeoCities]] (1994-2009) and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr][Tumblr]] (2007-present). | |
| 243 | These websites rapidly evolved the internet's landscape, as they offered a free | |
| 244 | method for anyone to deploy a website or blog. | |
| 245 | ||
| 246 | Imagine being a young person, or a high schooler, or a college student, or an | |
| 247 | adult in 2009. You have access to the internet and an interest in /something/ out | |
| 248 | there in the world. You do a quick search and find a page related to it on | |
| 249 | GeoCities or Tumblr, leading you down a hyperlink rabbit hole. | |
| 250 | ||
| 251 | If you were properly motivated at this time, you may wonder: "How do I do this? | |
| 252 | Can I create a page like this?" The answer was yes, and it was easy! A few | |
| 253 | minutes later, you could have your own site. There were few, if any, | |
| 254 | restrictions on what you could publish online. | |
| 255 | ||
| 256 | This could lead you to learning HTML and CSS, as many users wanted to customize | |
| 257 | their sites, which generally leads to users discovering the freedom of ownining | |
| 258 | their own sites. This included things like mail signatures, avatars, | |
| 259 | forum-specific usernames and more. | |
| 260 | ||
| 261 | The end result? Everyone could have their own corner of the internet. | |
| 262 | ||
| 263 | There was space for everyone and it was distinct. You could tell, both visually | |
| 264 | and otherwise, that a site belonged to someone specific. It was property, | |
| 265 | individually owned and updated by a human somewhere on Earth. | |
| 266 | ||
| 267 | * 2012: When Everything Started Changing | |
| 268 | ||
| 269 | Let's jump forward to the early/mid-2010s. I used 2012 as an example because | |
| 270 | that's when I was in my first year of high school. At this time, you begin to | |
| 271 | understand a bit more about the world, log more long-term memories in the brain, | |
| 272 | and shift your perspectives. | |
| 273 | ||
| 274 | Let's start by creating a perspective of the world's technology at this time: | |
| 275 | - The iPhone 5 was released. | |
| 276 | - The first iPad Mini was released. | |
| 277 | - The Wii U was released. | |
| 278 | - Windows 8 & macOS Mountain Lion were the primary operating systems. | |
| 279 | - YouTube, Tinder, & Vine ruled the digital landscape. | |
| 280 | - Perhaps you even watched Gangnam Style on YouTube this year. | |
| 281 | ||
| 282 | At this time, Facebook continued to cannibalize the internet. Each year, | |
| 283 | including 2012, Facebook consumed pages and converted websites into pages on | |
| 284 | their own website. Games, the app center, mobile apps, "pokes", and more slowly | |
| 285 | replaced other websites and communities on the web. | |
| 286 | ||
| 287 | /Twitter did the same thing around this time, to a lesser effect./ | |
| 288 | ||
| 289 | As part of this domination by the top web service providers, apps started | |
| 290 | quickly replacing URLs. It felt as if apps became a first-class citizen of the | |
| 291 | digital world and that they may actually be *more* preferential to launching a | |
| 292 | web-first service. | |
| 293 | ||
| 294 | Paired with this app-first and centralized web was a preference for *algorithms* | |
| 295 | (/everyone shudder together/) which used data about a user to determine a precise | |
| 296 | factor of content for a user. Who cares about privacy at this point, right? | |
| 297 | Let's just mine the data, build the features, make our money, and figure the | |
| 298 | rest out later. | |
| 299 | ||
| 300 | At the end of all this is a world where more users than ever are carrying | |
| 301 | smartphones, using apps over websites, using algorithms to find content, and | |
| 302 | circling around the socially-rewarding locations of the digital universe. | |
| 303 | ||
| 304 | Personally... this felt like the beginning of the end. There was a short period | |
| 305 | in the mid-2000s to the 2010s where these apps were truly rewarding and | |
| 306 | valuable. They brought people together and we shared knowledge faster than ever. | |
| 307 | ||
| 308 | However, there was a dark side to this revolution. As these apps progressed, and | |
| 309 | the underlying technologies progressed, the companies and investors driving | |
| 310 | these efforts took a turn. Efforts pushed into the world of micro-transactions, | |
| 311 | psychological rewards for utilizing a platform, profits over value, and a slow | |
| 312 | descent into a disregard for the users. | |
| 313 | ||
| 314 | To me, that 2012 era was a turning point. You may personally love a different | |
| 315 | era (1980/1990s gamer, anyone? Any former phreaks out there?), but to me, it | |
| 316 | felt like we kept making leaps in technological capability until we reached the | |
| 317 | point of economical profitability in the 2000s-2010s era, where corporations, | |
| 318 | investors, and governments took a serious interest in controlling the internet. | |
| 319 | ||
| 320 | From here on out, the digital landscape seems to have a more sinister appearance | |
| 321 | and affect on us. | |
| 322 | ||
| 323 | * 2026: Logging On Today | |
| 324 | ||
| 325 | Fast forward to today: 2026. You want to check the latest headlines in your browser (a simple task!): | |
| 326 | ||
| 327 | 1. Turn on your computer - most likely Windows 10 or 11. | |
| 328 | 2. The computer nags you for updates. | |
| 329 | 3. Windows has installed more games and ad-infested apps you don't want. | |
| 330 | 4. Windows then advertises these new "features" to you via notifications. | |
| 331 | 5. You open your default browser - most likely Chrome. | |
| 332 | 6. When you do so, Edge nags you and asks if you want to switch to Edge? | |
| 333 | 7. The homepage of your browser is littered with ads, promotions, and other | |
| 334 | distractions. | |
| 335 | 8. You start typing the URL of your favorite news site or searching for it - *but | |
| 336 | wait*, your browser has some "recommendations" first, which seem like | |
| 337 | thinly-veiled advertisements. | |
| 338 | 9. If you searched instead of typing the URL directly, your browser (most likely | |
| 339 | Google) will show you an AI summary loosely related to your search but not | |
| 340 | really what you were looking for you. Somewhere in the distance, a tree | |
| 341 | wilts. | |
| 342 | 10. Below the AI "summary", which somehow takes half of the page space, results | |
| 343 | are loaded. However, the top 3-5 are promoted results, which means they may | |
| 344 | or may not relate to your search but someone paid to have them included. | |
| 345 | 11. *FINALLY*, below all of that, will be the "real" results. These have been | |
| 346 | predetermined by Google's search algorithm. At this point, you'd suspect it | |
| 347 | would be consistent or at least transparent, right? Wrong. It's a black | |
| 348 | box - don't ask anymore questions. | |
| 349 | 12. You may click one, or maybe thirty, results before you find what you're | |
| 350 | looking for. | |
| 351 | 13. Great, a website with a real answer. But wait! You're not trustworthy | |
| 352 | because you haven't accepted every cookie and tracking beacon in the last | |
| 353 | decade. Therefore, you will have to solve a captcha that requires 13 | |
| 354 | iterations of clicking the "fastest animal" in an array of images, or worse, | |
| 355 | bikes in various countries. | |
| 356 | 14. Once you solve all that, there's a cookie banner waiting for you that gives | |
| 357 | you two options: | |
| 358 | 1. Agree to all tracking (without seeing any information). | |
| 359 | 2. Or, "see more", where you will be presented with somewhere around 20 | |
| 360 | toggles to limit "legitimate interest" third-parties in the numbers of | |
| 361 | the hundreds to thousands, or be ignorant and just accept all. | |
| 362 | 3. If you don't wish to spend a week of human time reading the agreements of | |
| 363 | these various parties, you will eventually lose hope and click whichever | |
| 364 | button lets you access the website. | |
| 365 | 15. Phew. Finally. We're on the site itself. *Oh wait* - another AI summary and | |
| 366 | maybe even an AI voice/podcast-style version of the article first? And it's | |
| 367 | the latest feature, so of course you'll be nagged to try it out. | |
| 368 | 16. Oh wait, you're interrupted again. This site requires age verification to | |
| 369 | view its contents. For some reason, another country's laws apply to you | |
| 370 | right now (spare me the legalese in your responses). Therefore, you will | |
| 371 | need to create an account, giving this company personal data again, and then | |
| 372 | upload your national ID or other identification to prove who you are. | |
| 373 | 17. Whoo! What an easy process that would inspire you to visit again. At this | |
| 374 | point, you can view the latest news article on the topic you were searching | |
| 375 | for. Unfortunately, this site is owned by the same group of people who own | |
| 376 | basically all news sites - ensuring you are reading the exact viewpoints | |
| 377 | they are looking to communicate. | |
| 378 | ||
| 379 | What's the common theme here? There's an expectation on us at every single | |
| 380 | step - proof of identification, proof of humanity, testing of their new | |
| 381 | features, consumption of their views, etc., etc., etc. | |
| 382 | ||
| 383 | Pause too long on an ad because you're doing something in real life? Dang, seems | |
| 384 | like someone online made an impression on you and you will be shown that content | |
| 385 | religiously for months. | |
| 386 | ||
| 387 | We are rarely, if ever, allowed to freely roam and consume content we search for | |
| 388 | or type in. There are innumerable layers of intermediaries impeding our digital | |
| 389 | navigation. At each step, you may feel as if there's another party extracting | |
| 390 | commercial value from your visit, your clicks, your eyes, your mouse, or your | |
| 391 | scrolls. | |
| 392 | ||
| 393 | * The Internet I Miss | |
| 394 | ||
| 395 | I'm going to yell at clouds now. Be prepared. | |
| 396 | ||
| 397 | I miss the /old/ web, the indie web. Where websites were authored by humans, even | |
| 398 | in capacity underneath a corporation. | |
| 399 | ||
| 400 | We had rudimentary tools to solve the riddle of discovery, but they were tools | |
| 401 | nonetheless. Want to discover and explore new sites? You had search options, | |
| 402 | such as early Google or Jeeves, or third party tools. We had web rings, | |
| 403 | blogrolls, link lists, and other manually-curated pages to discover top-tier | |
| 404 | content. | |
| 405 | ||
| 406 | We dealt with slow speeds, lack of early web security, and strangers because the | |
| 407 | internet offered so much opportunity. Over time, that opportunity has shrunk | |
| 408 | drastically and the cost of visiting the internet has both become mandatory, yet | |
| 409 | more expensive. | |
| 410 | ||
| 411 | Finally, /no one/ owned the internet. Sure, we can get into semantics of the DNS | |
| 412 | system and infrastructure, but the web - and specifically, content - quickly | |
| 413 | became decentralized after the early stages until the recent centralization of | |
| 414 | content. | |
| 415 | ||
| 416 | I just miss being able to visit the web, find personal content from fellow | |
| 417 | internet explorers, and not spend the whole time avoiding the pitfalls of the | |
| 418 | modern web. | |
| 419 | ||
| 420 | * Closing | |
| 421 | ||
| 422 | As I wrote this post, I went through many thoughts and emotions. One thought was | |
| 423 | that the internet, as we knew it, disappeared. However, I don't think it did. | |
| 424 | Rather, the experience of the internet disappeared. | |
| 425 | ||
| 426 | I certainly don't want to go back to 2005, I just hope we don't lose the parts | |
| 427 | that made it feel worth exploring. | |