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-#+date: [2026-06-29 Mon 21:12:00]
-#+title: The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore
-#+description:
-#+slug: internet
-#+filetags: :personal:web:
-#+draft: t
-
-* Introduction
-
-The internet; what can I say? It's the driving force behind nearly the whole
-world today - economies, countries, communities, and more run solely on the
-internet these days.
-
-However, it wasn't always this way.
-
-Once upon a time, the internet didn't even exist. When it did, the internet was
-a *place*. It was a place you went. You selectively chose to visit the internet,
-based on your own free will.
-
-If you wanted to visit a chat room, or perhaps preview a fancy new Flash game,
-you visited the internet for a few minutes in the evening before going back to
-your family or friends.
-
-This has changed dramatically in the last 20-30 years. Today, it's 2026 and
-woven into nearly every part of daily life for the majority of the Earth's
-population.
-
-Let's do a quick checklist and see what requires the internet or becomes tedious
-if we opt not to use the internet (yes, this list is tedious on purpose):
-- Banking
-- Paying bills
-- Taxes
-- Shopping
-- Watching TV or movies
-- Listening to music
-- Reading the news
-- Looking up directions
-- Ordering food
-- Booking travel
-- Messaging friends and family
-- Video calls
-- Playing most modern video games
-- Downloading software updates
-- Activating new devices
-- Backing up photos
-- Storing files
-- Finding a restaurant
-- Reading reviews
-- Checking the weather
-- Looking up a recipe
-- Researching almost anything
-- Applying for a job
-- Remote work
-- School and homework
-- Medical records
-- Scheduling appointments
-- Government services
-- Renewing licenses
-- Filing insurance claims
-- Managing investments
-- Home security cameras
-- Smart home devices
-- Navigation in your car
-- Finding a phone number
-- Dating
-- Selling used items
-- Buying event tickets
-- Boarding a flight
-- Receiving package updates
-- Authentication (2FA)
-- Password management
-- Identity verification
-
-What a list. How fun. I love being absolutely restricted to a specific
-technology or method with little to no options.
-
-Joking aside, this post is my personal reflection of the internet, and perhaps
-tech and life in general, over my lifetime. I was born in the late 1990s, but
-was also born in a rural area of the USA, so I have been privileged to see
-technology evolve from the "my stereo is the highest tech equipment in my house"
-stage to the "I have all of human history in my pocket" stages.
-
-This post is about remembering these moments from my perspective, regardless of
-whether the evolutions have been good or bad.
-
-As you read on, *please* (*PLEASE!*) send me an email if this post sparks a memory
-or you have thoughts. I genuinely enjoy hearing these stories from anyone, and I
-push for you to send me them as you think of them.
-
-* 2001: The Family Computer
-
-The family computer. What a throwback. Perhaps you even had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place][third place]]
-computer you visited. Wherever, whatever that computer was - think of that
-computer as you read this. I will be speaking from my perspective and I hope it
-resounds with someone out there.
-
-I recall coming home from school, getting through required chores, homework, or
-anything else first. Perhaps you had siblings with which you shared the computer
-or the TV.
-
-In my case, we owned an early 2000s Gateway tower PC. A beautiful (read: ugly),
-beige Gateway computer with the spotted cow on it. It sat on a big "oak" hutch,
-with integrated file-compatible drawers and specific spots for your matching
-beige desktop speakers.
-
-#+caption: Gateway Ad from 1992
-[[https://www.vice.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/1565048739851-image3.png]]
-
-To use the computer, you likely turned on a very heavy CRT monitor. Perhaps it
-even flickered, emitted you a static buzz, or showed a wavy pattern in the
-graphics. This was the epitome of 2000s technology and people loved it.
-
-#+being_quote
-*Side note*: We owned a heavy, wooden CRT TV set from the 1970s or 1980s that hid
-all buttons behind a fake, black "speaker" that you could press to pop open. A
-decade or two after we had tossed this TV into our barn for disposal, my brother
-an I took turns hitting the glass screen it as hard as we could with a baseball
-bat.
-
-It never left a mark, regardless of how hard we hit it. Why don't we produce
-that quality anymore?
-#+end_quote
-
-If you wanted to use the computer, you had to press a very heavy, circular
-button that would emit a memorable CLUNK as you engaged the button within the
-PC. This would result in an airplane level of whirring while it used maybe a few
-GB of memory and hard drive storage to boot up [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95][Windows 95]].
-
-#+caption: Windows 95 Desktop
-[[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at_first_run.png]]
-
-At this point, the world was your oyster. You could do so many things that
-humans throughout history couldn't do:
-- Open multiple programs *at the same time*. Scientists were baffled.
-- Minimize a window, then bring it back later. Pure sorcery.
-- Move files by dragging them with your mouse. We truly lived in the future.
-- Change the color of every pixel in *Paint*. Michelangelo could never.
-- Hear your speakers make a loud POP every time Windows started. Reassuring.
-- Watch a progress bar slowly fill from left to right while estimating "time to
-  complete" at 800 years. Entertainment for the whole family.
-- Crash the entire computer because you opened one too many programs. Unlimited
-  power comes with responsibility.
-
-If you were luckier than I was, you also had access to the *INTERNET* at this
-point. The cyberspace where you transmitted your energy through hyperwaves to
-digital ends of the earth (i.e., sent a message to a stranger).
-
-My family had a dial-up modem until the mid-2000s, so I was rarely to use the
-internet at this point. The extent of my experience spanned between our family
-computer (used for games, documents, and wasting time exploring every single
-menu and application available in Windows) and the church computer lab
-(containing even older computers, somehow).
-
-At this point, there was no ritual to the internet or even to the computer
-itself. The computer was a tool used for specific tasks, such as my mother
-designing pamphlets in some obscure program for printing, or for fun.
-
-Often times, you would sit down with no particular destination. You were
-*exploring*. I use that word specifically because it's how I truly felt. Whenever
-I turned on a computer, I was exploring a digital universe that had not been
-charted before.
-
-At this point, the internet was a distinct place you visited. Or, could ignore.
-If you didn't like computers or the internet, no worries. You could ignore it as
-much as you'd like.
-
-* 2004: Exploring the Web
-
-The internet stopped feeling like a software.
-
-It became its own world.
-
-This is the point in my life where the internet became real. I wasn't a pioneer
-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
-test and brute force any system through sheer curiosity, from a very early age.
-
-At this time, we launched [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer][Internet Explorer]] and loaded up your favorite search
-engine. Perhaps it was Yahoo!, Altavista, MSN, Google, or something else.
-
-This was probably your home page, your default search engine in the browser, and
-had an annoying toolbar installed on top of the browser itself. If you were
-silly enough (like me), you had numerous toolbars that sacrificed valuable
-screen space for the sake of /nothing/.
-
-Suddenly, you could find almost anything ever uploaded to the internet. Some
-options could be:
-- A walkthrough for the level you were stuck on.
-- A fan site dedicated to your favorite TV show.
-- A forum with 12 members arguing about phreaking.
-- A Flash game that somehow consumed your entire afternoon.
-- Someone's personal blog documenting their life in excruciating detail.
-
-More than this, the internet always felt *enormous* at this stage. No matter how
-much you explored, searched, or cataloged, you never had the full image. The
-internet was endless, borderless, and expansive. There was always a new rabbit
-hole waiting for you. Even if you had to watch every image slowly appear one
-horizontal line at a time.
-
-Before moving on to the next section, do you remember the [[https://www.spacejam.com/1996/][1996 SpaceJame
-website]]? What a modern marvel. Honestly one of the world's wonders.
-
-* 2007: Living There
-
-Here we are. The part of this post I recall most vividly. The mid-2000s were a
-phenomenal time in my personal history, as they were my transformative years. As
-it relates to computing and the internet, this means that the mid-2000s were the
-years of my utmost exploration, exploitation, and emancipation.
-
-Where do I even start? Perhaps we start with the state of the internet and what
-exactly was available online. Perhaps this is triggering for certain readers,
-and I apologize if it is, but it is the way the internet was at the time.
-
-If you wanted to see gruesome videos of executions, suicides, or the pain
-olympics, all it took was a single search and your search engine would happily
-return any results relevant to the words you typed.
-
-If you wanted to share information over the internet at this point, you probably
-had an email from a site like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or your ISP
-(Roadrunner, anyone?). Additionally, at this point, webmail clients were
-extremely popular and most users would launch the webmail clients from their
-providers to participate in email.
-
-Those of us who were /cool/ used things like MSN Messenger, AIM, etc. to chat
-quickly without having to use an email. You could even use little pictures that
-provided emotional reactions for you! Oh my goodness, what a time.
-
-#+caption: MSN Messenger Emoticons
-[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20260627-internet/msn_emojis.webp]]
-
-Beyond chatting, the next big thing coming in the digital space was gaming. At
-this time, it was seen as perhaps a silly side-hobby for some. While there may
-have been some money in it for a few select games, most were not profitable -
-they were created for other reasons, such as genuine intrigue in mechanics,
-users' fun, and curiosity.
-
-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
-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.
-
-Beyond gaming, this was the age of users learning how to launch their own blogs,
-vlogs, websites, and more.
-
-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).
-These websites rapidly evolved the internet's landscape, as they offered a free
-method for anyone to deploy a website or blog.
-
-Imagine being a young person, or a high schooler, or a college student, or an
-adult in 2009. You have access to the internet and an interest in /something/ out
-there in the world. You do a quick search and find a page related to it on
-GeoCities or Tumblr, leading you down a hyperlink rabbit hole.
-
-If you were properly motivated at this time, you may wonder: "How do I do this?
-Can I create a page like this?" The answer was yes, and it was easy! A few
-minutes later, you could have your own site. There were few, if any,
-restrictions on what you could publish online.
-
-This could lead you to learning HTML and CSS, as many users wanted to customize
-their sites, which generally leads to users discovering the freedom of ownining
-their own sites. This included things like mail signatures, avatars,
-forum-specific usernames and more.
-
-The end result? Everyone could have their own corner of the internet.
-
-There was space for everyone and it was distinct. You could tell, both visually
-and otherwise, that a site belonged to someone specific. It was property,
-individually owned and updated by a human somewhere on Earth.
-
-* 2012: When Everything Started Changing
-
-Let's jump forward to the early/mid-2010s. I used 2012 as an example because
-that's when I was in my first year of high school. At this time, you begin to
-understand a bit more about the world, log more long-term memories in the brain,
-and shift your perspectives.
-
-Let's start by creating a perspective of the world's technology at this time:
-- The iPhone 5 was released.
-- The first iPad Mini was released.
-- The Wii U was released.
-- Windows 8 & macOS Mountain Lion were the primary operating systems.
-- YouTube, Tinder, & Vine ruled the digital landscape.
-  - Perhaps you even watched Gangnam Style on YouTube this year.
-
-At this time, Facebook continued to cannibalize the internet. Each year,
-including 2012, Facebook consumed pages and converted websites into pages on
-their own website. Games, the app center, mobile apps, "pokes", and more slowly
-replaced other websites and communities on the web.
-
-/Twitter did the same thing around this time, to a lesser effect./
-
-As part of this domination by the top web service providers, apps started
-quickly replacing URLs. It felt as if apps became a first-class citizen of the
-digital world and that they may actually be *more* preferential to launching a
-web-first service.
-
-Paired with this app-first and centralized web was a preference for *algorithms*
-(/everyone shudder together/) which used data about a user to determine a precise
-factor of content for a user. Who cares about privacy at this point, right?
-Let's just mine the data, build the features, make our money, and figure the
-rest out later.
-
-At the end of all this is a world where more users than ever are carrying
-smartphones, using apps over websites, using algorithms to find content, and
-circling around the socially-rewarding locations of the digital universe.
-
-Personally... this felt like the beginning of the end. There was a short period
-in the mid-2000s to the 2010s where these apps were truly rewarding and
-valuable. They brought people together and we shared knowledge faster than ever.
-
-However, there was a dark side to this revolution. As these apps progressed, and
-the underlying technologies progressed, the companies and investors driving
-these efforts took a turn. Efforts pushed into the world of micro-transactions,
-psychological rewards for utilizing a platform, profits over value, and a slow
-descent into a disregard for the users.
-
-To me, that 2012 era was a turning point. You may personally love a different
-era (1980/1990s gamer, anyone? Any former phreaks out there?), but to me, it
-felt like we kept making leaps in technological capability until we reached the
-point of economical profitability in the 2000s-2010s era, where corporations,
-investors, and governments took a serious interest in controlling the internet.
-
-From here on out, the digital landscape seems to have a more sinister appearance
-and affect on us.
-
-* 2026: Logging On Today
-
-Fast forward to today: 2026. You want to check the latest headlines in your browser (a simple task!):
-
-1. Turn on your computer - most likely Windows 10 or 11.
-2. The computer nags you for updates.
-3. Windows has installed more games and ad-infested apps you don't want.
-4. Windows then advertises these new "features" to you via notifications.
-5. You open your default browser - most likely Chrome.
-6. When you do so, Edge nags you and asks if you want to switch to Edge?
-7. The homepage of your browser is littered with ads, promotions, and other
-   distractions.
-8. You start typing the URL of your favorite news site or searching for it - *but
-   wait*, your browser has some "recommendations" first, which seem like
-   thinly-veiled advertisements.
-9. If you searched instead of typing the URL directly, your browser (most likely
-   Google) will show you an AI summary loosely related to your search but not
-   really what you were looking for you. Somewhere in the distance, a tree
-   wilts.
-10. Below the AI "summary", which somehow takes half of the page space, results
-    are loaded. However, the top 3-5 are promoted results, which means they may
-    or may not relate to your search but someone paid to have them included.
-11. *FINALLY*, below all of that, will be the "real" results. These have been
-    predetermined by Google's search algorithm. At this point, you'd suspect it
-    would be consistent or at least transparent, right? Wrong. It's a black
-    box - don't ask anymore questions.
-12. You may click one, or maybe thirty, results before you find what you're
-    looking for.
-13. Great, a website with a real answer. But wait! You're not trustworthy
-    because you haven't accepted every cookie and tracking beacon in the last
-    decade. Therefore, you will have to solve a captcha that requires 13
-    iterations of clicking the "fastest animal" in an array of images, or worse,
-    bikes in various countries.
-14. Once you solve all that, there's a cookie banner waiting for you that gives
-    you two options:
-    1. Agree to all tracking (without seeing any information).
-    2. Or, "see more", where you will be presented with somewhere around 20
-       toggles to limit "legitimate interest" third-parties in the numbers of
-       the hundreds to thousands, or be ignorant and just accept all.
-    3. If you don't wish to spend a week of human time reading the agreements of
-       these various parties, you will eventually lose hope and click whichever
-       button lets you access the website.
-15. Phew. Finally. We're on the site itself. *Oh wait* - another AI summary and
-    maybe even an AI voice/podcast-style version of the article first? And it's
-    the latest feature, so of course you'll be nagged to try it out.
-16. Oh wait, you're interrupted again. This site requires age verification to
-    view its contents. For some reason, another country's laws apply to you
-    right now (spare me the legalese in your responses). Therefore, you will
-    need to create an account, giving this company personal data again, and then
-    upload your national ID or other identification to prove who you are.
-17. Whoo! What an easy process that would inspire you to visit again. At this
-    point, you can view the latest news article on the topic you were searching
-    for. Unfortunately, this site is owned by the same group of people who own
-    basically all news sites - ensuring you are reading the exact viewpoints
-    they are looking to communicate.
-
-What's the common theme here? There's an expectation on us at every single
-step - proof of identification, proof of humanity, testing of their new
-features, consumption of their views, etc., etc., etc.
-
-Pause too long on an ad because you're doing something in real life? Dang, seems
-like someone online made an impression on you and you will be shown that content
-religiously for months.
-
-We are rarely, if ever, allowed to freely roam and consume content we search for
-or type in. There are innumerable layers of intermediaries impeding our digital
-navigation. At each step, you may feel as if there's another party extracting
-commercial value from your visit, your clicks, your eyes, your mouse, or your
-scrolls.
-
-* The Internet I Miss
-
-I'm going to yell at clouds now. Be prepared.
-
-I miss the /old/ web, the indie web. Where websites were authored by humans, even
-in capacity underneath a corporation.
-
-We had rudimentary tools to solve the riddle of discovery, but they were tools
-nonetheless. Want to discover and explore new sites? You had search options,
-such as early Google or Jeeves, or third party tools. We had web rings,
-blogrolls, link lists, and other manually-curated pages to discover top-tier
-content.
-
-We dealt with slow speeds, lack of early web security, and strangers because the
-internet offered so much opportunity. Over time, that opportunity has shrunk
-drastically and the cost of visiting the internet has both become mandatory, yet
-more expensive.
-
-Finally, /no one/ owned the internet. Sure, we can get into semantics of the DNS
-system and infrastructure, but the web - and specifically, content - quickly
-became decentralized after the early stages until the recent centralization of
-content.
-
-I just miss being able to visit the web, find personal content from fellow
-internet explorers, and not spend the whole time avoiding the pitfalls of the
-modern web.
-
-* Closing
-
-As I wrote this post, I went through many thoughts and emotions. One thought was
-that the internet, as we knew it, disappeared. However, I don't think it did.
-Rather, the experience of the internet disappeared.
-
-I certainly don't want to go back to 2005, I just hope we don't lose the parts
-that made it feel worth exploring.