Every so often I wonder about just what the fuck happened to the
internet. When was it, exactly, that the place everyone used to
love, heralded as the next great age of human communication, where
just browsing around from site to site was enormously entertaining,
where you could email someone and expect a reply.. when did this all
go to shit?
Something caught my eye in the introduction to the book Stoned,
Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor's Window (which, incidentally,
you can read at Amazon.com). The book is by the guy who came up with
grouphug.us, a site where you
can post anonymous confessions about, say, how much time you waste
on the internet. The author suggests that it was the dot-com bust
that turned things to hell:
"It's not porno, Nigerian bank scams, junk mail, viruses, bad
design, and sexy pinups of Rob Reiner that's sucking the fun out of
the internet. It's the same party of ugly rich fatties that at one
time or another tries to ruin everything good... CFO Rich Dickpants
may have been entertaining underage boys the night before, but by
noon he was straightening his tie and knew who to blame for all the
trouble: everyone else... The Internet companies that managed to
survive the tech bust consolidated like mad. They stopped inventing
cool shit and before long 75 percent of the Internet looked the
same."
It's pretty simple, but I think he's probably partially right.
The majority of the innovation that created the Internet of the
1990's was by and large caused by the hysteria of profit -- the
IPO's, the stock options, the bonuses. When the dot-com's busted,
and those who made billions and those who lost it all cleared out,
everyone knew the internet wouldn't be going anywhere, sure. But
when the dust finally cleared, we had a new, sinking feeling that we
were stuck with what we were left with -- this is what its gonna be
like from now on. And that, frankly, was depressing.
Where is the innovation on the Internet these days? And please
don't say blogs. That is not innovation. Blogs are a catchy buzzword
for the refuse of the dot-com era, created using pretty much the
same technology invented to propel IPO stock prices into the triple
digits.
I want the old internet back. Where it was insane, it was fun,
and where technology like, say, VRML made everyone laugh. Things
like VRML were ridiculous, sure, but at least it was something
new. What's new now?
