I've Been On Computer Networks For 43 Years – Boy Has It Changed

– and not for the better.

From the days of dial-up bulletin boards and Compuserve, to university internet, Gopher, NCSA Mosaic and the "web of '93" to today.

I no longer have social media accounts (save a small Instagram with no posts, no comments, no likes [take that Insta ban wave]) and only follow a literally handful of cultural institutions. It. is. minimal.

Big whoop, so what? You may say.

All I can say is that over the best part of half a century global internetwork computer systems have changed drastically, at one point getting ever better and connecting like-mind people across the world, easily, almost effortlessly, then in the 2010s something happened (well, it was business and mega corps coming to the fore but sadly that writing was on the wall since at least 1999).

I also believe that "the internet in your pocket" really changed things with mass adoption by crowds of people who simply... behaved differently... online.

Now "AI" has messed things up and is being inserted everywhere (for me WhatsApp was the most recent deletion).

Now I'm seriously considering leaving the smartphone at home and picking up a dumbphone, reading more books, walking, and writing more letters (which has proven a therapeutic joy – try it – it lights up people who receive them).

I lament the internet as it used to be and what it could have been – but it is what it is and all I can do as an individual is improve myself. It takes effort but nothing good ever happened otherwise.