What Happened to the New Internet?
Metadata
Highlights
- Powerful companies, perverse incentives, all-consuming digital environments. We all know the tune. Together these conditions have brought us to a place of casual dystopia. We use the internet constantly everyday, but rarely without distress, be it conscious or subconscious. This is not to say it’s not still capable of wonder, beauty, and bliss. It’s just that these moments have become the exception before the norm. The internet works but not for us. This much is painstakingly obvious and has been for years. And yet, where are the better alternatives? (View Highlight)
- I’m writing this piece because I want to rediscover the lost values that surround the New Internet movement. I want to dust off and conjure the same feelings I felt in 2017 – the intense belief that another, better internet is possible, and that there are people like me who want it too. Maybe this conjuring is for the sake of resurrecting momentum. Maybe it’s just for the sake of recollection going into whatever new era lies ahead. In either scenario, my ambitions aren’t a product of some overly-nostalgic pipe dream. For myself, and I’d imagine others reading this, reclaiming the plot and ethos of the New Internet is the only way I can think of remaining excited about working in the technology industry without committing a careerist LARP. The goal here isn’t just measuring value drift, it’s realignment. (View Highlight)
- Promptly sucking up all the oxygen from the P2P movement was what we now call crypto. From roughly the years 2017 to 2020, technological reform became inextricably connected to and consumed by various blockchain networks and their contained projects. The details of this cannibalism are complicated. The condensed story is that free-flowing, ideologically-supercharged investment capital captured the attention of young technologists who otherwise would have carried the torch of the P2P web forward. In crypto, an entire generation of alienated tech workers saw potential to have their cake (create a better, decentralized internet) and eat it too (get very wealthy). (View Highlight)
- Young romantics working at the “intersection of art and technology” launched endless criticisms of big tech’s overreach and in the process created the foundations for an entire scene of left-field internet aesthetics. Compared to the politicians and philanthropists, this scene had real exports including art, books, games, schools, and communities. But like all reactionary milieus, it wasn’t clear if the main output of this scene was an antithetical vibe before it was new institutions or even an actual new internet. (View Highlight)
- We collectively wanted the internet to be safer and more fun. We wanted to hang out online with our friends in a way that preserved our autonomy and dignity. We didn’t want to feel like our brains were melting every time we opened a browser tab. We wanted to experience technological simplicity without becoming luddites. We were exhausted by ‘Apps,’ even though their preeminence was still a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of the internet. Instead of a shopping mall, we wanted the internet to feel like a garden and if a garden wasn’t realistic, maybe just a little more like PBS or Runescape. (View Highlight)
- This is where I was exposed to what I considered to be the first inklings of the New Internet. The vision was slightly scattered, but it felt pure. We would talk about subjects like mesh networks, up-and-coming ‘tools for thought,’ or just a nicely designed website. The reimagined computer interface project known as Dynamicland was a constant source of intrigue and inspiration. We meticulously cataloged references on Are.na – the golden child of the New Internet, and hotbed for meeting fellow reformists outside of Learning Gardens. Ted Nelson, the creator of the Hyperlink and prophet of interconnectedness was appropriately revered by us, as was creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand. Everything remained firmly speculative; we weren’t trying to start a company or take down Facebook. But there was the feeling of forward momentum nonetheless. (View Highlight)
- In mainly focussing on the big talk and easy wins that can come from rethinking software and end-user experience, New Internet practitioners set themselves up to eventually run into infrastructural impasses. There’s only so much you can change if Amazon still owns the server and Apple still makes the browsing device. I don’t think this is something New Internet practitioners were ever oblivious to, but at the same time, they weren’t entirely honest with how much work this would take to circumvent. Saying you want to change something, and actually changing it are two different jobs. (View Highlight)
- The first thing I’ve come to learn is that pursuing something as open-ended as internet reform requires intentional scoping and goal-setting. The New Internet was never a single thing. It was fractured and messily connected from the jump. This messiness was used as feedstock to accelerate its consolidation under what became the crypto industry. It was in the process of conforming into an industrial vertical that much of what made the New Internet compelling was destroyed. What if the New Internet was to once again lean into the primordial soup of idealism that it was born in?
To pull this off, I’ve been thinking about what it might mean for the New Internet to persist as, not a full stack replacement, but a coexisting counterculture, at least for the time being. Maybe the goal is not _the _New Internet, but a series of internets that live alongside a more mainstream, lackluster counterpart. As opposed to a monolithic archipelago these internets could be thought of as autonomous island nations that users jump between. Some of these islands will provide things that others can’t. Some will have trade lines and smooth ferries that run between them and some will be unnavigable to everyone but the most experienced of sailors. (View Highlight)
title: “What Happened to the New Internet?”
author: “bryanlehrer.com”
url: ”https://www.bryanlehrer.com/entries/new-internet/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: reader
tags: media/articles
What Happened to the New Internet?
Metadata
Highlights
- Powerful companies, perverse incentives, all-consuming digital environments. We all know the tune. Together these conditions have brought us to a place of casual dystopia. We use the internet constantly everyday, but rarely without distress, be it conscious or subconscious. This is not to say it’s not still capable of wonder, beauty, and bliss. It’s just that these moments have become the exception before the norm. The internet works but not for us. This much is painstakingly obvious and has been for years. And yet, where are the better alternatives? (View Highlight)
- I’m writing this piece because I want to rediscover the lost values that surround the New Internet movement. I want to dust off and conjure the same feelings I felt in 2017 – the intense belief that another, better internet is possible, and that there are people like me who want it too. Maybe this conjuring is for the sake of resurrecting momentum. Maybe it’s just for the sake of recollection going into whatever new era lies ahead. In either scenario, my ambitions aren’t a product of some overly-nostalgic pipe dream. For myself, and I’d imagine others reading this, reclaiming the plot and ethos of the New Internet is the only way I can think of remaining excited about working in the technology industry without committing a careerist LARP. The goal here isn’t just measuring value drift, it’s realignment. (View Highlight)
- Promptly sucking up all the oxygen from the P2P movement was what we now call crypto. From roughly the years 2017 to 2020, technological reform became inextricably connected to and consumed by various blockchain networks and their contained projects. The details of this cannibalism are complicated. The condensed story is that free-flowing, ideologically-supercharged investment capital captured the attention of young technologists who otherwise would have carried the torch of the P2P web forward. In crypto, an entire generation of alienated tech workers saw potential to have their cake (create a better, decentralized internet) and eat it too (get very wealthy). (View Highlight)
- Young romantics working at the “intersection of art and technology” launched endless criticisms of big tech’s overreach and in the process created the foundations for an entire scene of left-field internet aesthetics. Compared to the politicians and philanthropists, this scene had real exports including art, books, games, schools, and communities. But like all reactionary milieus, it wasn’t clear if the main output of this scene was an antithetical vibe before it was new institutions or even an actual new internet. (View Highlight)
- We collectively wanted the internet to be safer and more fun. We wanted to hang out online with our friends in a way that preserved our autonomy and dignity. We didn’t want to feel like our brains were melting every time we opened a browser tab. We wanted to experience technological simplicity without becoming luddites. We were exhausted by ‘Apps,’ even though their preeminence was still a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of the internet. Instead of a shopping mall, we wanted the internet to feel like a garden and if a garden wasn’t realistic, maybe just a little more like PBS or Runescape. (View Highlight)
- This is where I was exposed to what I considered to be the first inklings of the New Internet. The vision was slightly scattered, but it felt pure. We would talk about subjects like mesh networks, up-and-coming ‘tools for thought,’ or just a nicely designed website. The reimagined computer interface project known as Dynamicland was a constant source of intrigue and inspiration. We meticulously cataloged references on Are.na – the golden child of the New Internet, and hotbed for meeting fellow reformists outside of Learning Gardens. Ted Nelson, the creator of the Hyperlink and prophet of interconnectedness was appropriately revered by us, as was creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand. Everything remained firmly speculative; we weren’t trying to start a company or take down Facebook. But there was the feeling of forward momentum nonetheless. (View Highlight)
- In mainly focussing on the big talk and easy wins that can come from rethinking software and end-user experience, New Internet practitioners set themselves up to eventually run into infrastructural impasses. There’s only so much you can change if Amazon still owns the server and Apple still makes the browsing device. I don’t think this is something New Internet practitioners were ever oblivious to, but at the same time, they weren’t entirely honest with how much work this would take to circumvent. Saying you want to change something, and actually changing it are two different jobs. (View Highlight)
- The first thing I’ve come to learn is that pursuing something as open-ended as internet reform requires intentional scoping and goal-setting. The New Internet was never a single thing. It was fractured and messily connected from the jump. This messiness was used as feedstock to accelerate its consolidation under what became the crypto industry. It was in the process of conforming into an industrial vertical that much of what made the New Internet compelling was destroyed. What if the New Internet was to once again lean into the primordial soup of idealism that it was born in?
To pull this off, I’ve been thinking about what it might mean for the New Internet to persist as, not a full stack replacement, but a coexisting counterculture, at least for the time being. Maybe the goal is not _the _New Internet, but a series of internets that live alongside a more mainstream, lackluster counterpart. As opposed to a monolithic archipelago these internets could be thought of as autonomous island nations that users jump between. Some of these islands will provide things that others can’t. Some will have trade lines and smooth ferries that run between them and some will be unnavigable to everyone but the most experienced of sailors. (View Highlight)