The slow shift towards a decentralized web. For activists from India/ Asia seeking privacy and a safe place to share information, check out Freenet. Started by EFF's Mike Godwin:
+ I'm old enough to remember the Web of the 1990s/ 2000s.
It was a maze. You followed hypertext links, stumbled into forums and early troll-caves, used Slashdot and GoTo, experimented with LiveJournal and Blogger.
It wasn't safe, it was filled with weirdness, appealed heavily to geeks and loners. Being on the web in that era was a serious trip.
But it wasn't corporate. It wasn't the tool of major governments, yet. It was defiantly decentralised, and when you were online...
... you felt free.
@nilanjanaroy I was born in '96 and what you're describing sounds wonderful. I wish I got to experience that. The closest I got was when youtube was new. I would love to be able to experience the web before youtube, before google even. I consume a lot of cyberpunk, and it's always really weird to realize that a lot of the tech we have now that is normal for anyone to own, especially online, surpasses what was dreamt about in those books and games- yet it doesn't feel rebellious, shadowy, or free
@Natomatic
Nice post. Cyberpunk was created earlier and they showed remarkable vision and creativity. I love the genre too.
Google wasn't bad when it started - in fact it was cool, a llt nicer than the existing search engines at the time. Yahoo was always plastered with advertising, and I never liked it.
Google's search page was clean, had good results, and it built up from there. Once they went big, corporate and issued shares into the capital markets, they had a big direction change.
My first network was via local BBS systems, in the early 90's, and now that I joined fedi I find it surprisingly similar to our experience back then.
Small, isolated systems, funded and administrated independently, but still connected, even internationally, via the FidoNet network and dial up lines.
I was a node in the net once, and had people calling my system from overseas with a file request when I announced it was available.
We used different software, all of them were front end compatible.
@Full_marx , check this thread. 😉
My first exposure to a computer was in a cybercafe in 98
The first site i visited was mykindasite.com
it was a site full of games and fun stuff you could to.
The rate at that time was 10rs/hour
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In India,
Computers didn't reach people's houses till the early 2000s
And for most, the centralised web is their first experience in computing.
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I still remember using the dial up connection, I would sing the dial up tone!!!
And my parents yelling at me for always being online and keeping the phone engaged !!
Good ole days of 52kbps internet!!
@design_RG
It was 99 not 98
Although the site doesn't exist but I found an article that was published during the height of the Boom.
https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/cybercroresindianet/208566
@Natomatic @nilanjanaroy