This reading was a very interesting opportunity to learn about the age of the internet that I never got to experience growing up. It’s fascinating how the most primitive form of the internet in many ways was the most free and pure version of the internet we have ever had, with close knit communities connecting people all over the world in ways that the largest tech companies seemingly only try to emulate today. One part that stood out in particular was about Name.Space and how they were already trying to make the internet harder to monopolize by creating more variation in the names of websites. The early days of the internet had such a rich and unique culture that produced a lot of original ideas and allowed for collaboration in ways that seem much harder to do today. Even though the internet we know now is much more advanced and can offer so many more things than the internet of the 90s did, it does seem like along the way we really lost the authentic interpersonal connection that originally made the internet such an alluring and creative place to be.
It also stood out to me that as soon as the internet became mainstream enough for regular people to access and use it in the 90s, artists were some of the first to explore its potential and immediately carved out an entirely new genre of artistic expression. I wonder how different the internet we know today would be if those kinds of people weren’t there to push the boundaries of shared creativity through the internet from the start.
