T w e n t y S i d e d

On Tuesday’s post about the dot-com spectacle, there were a few comments on “paving eden”, the time when the internet stopped being the domain of academics and became the spawning pool of e-business. I also learned about the Eternal September, which is an interesting bit of net-lore that I missed. Then Pixy said:

Since I’ve earned my living working for a .com company for the last 13 years or so, I can’t argue with that at all. Although, I know almost nothing of what the ‘net was like before 1994.

But his comment does bring to mind the following:

In 1992 I had a friend who belonged to a Trek mailing list. He attended college and through whatever clanking machinery they used at the time he was able to access the internet. He would bring me the entire weekly summary of the list traffic as a hardcopy. I LOVED reading it. The people were articulate, thoughtful, and polite. I wanted to join, but I didn’t even know how to get ‘net access at the time. (I’m sure I wouldn’t have called it “net” access, either.) Reading the list was like listening to a group of friends discuss a common interest. It wasn’t even that I was that thrilled about Trek. It’s just that these were smart people and I enjoyed reading what they had to say.

In 1996 or so I remembered the list and decided to see if I could find such a group and join in the discussion. I’m sure you can imagine the results. I was mystified: Every list I joined was filled with condescending idiots, trolls, flamers, and endless armies of professional nitpickers. Unlike the 1992 list, almost everyone was anonymous and wrote under various childish nicknames. I think about half of them were named “admiral something”. I wondered why I couldn’t find that one, original list. Eventually I realized that it was gone. Not just that the list itself was no longer active, but that the environment in which it had thrived had long since ceased to exist. The internet had grown from a small town where everyone knew everyone else into a big city full of angry denizens giving each other the finger.

I actually think the net is much more civilized today than it was a decade ago. For a while the net was ugly, mean, brimming with scams, populated by frightening lunatics, and even the most innocent link could lead to a porn storm of popups. All of that stuff still exists, but it’s been ages since I had to worry about any of it. It’s not that there are less idiots, it’s just that we have better ways of filtering the idiots. In a lot of ways I’ve finally recaptured that “small town” dynamic in that 1992 Trek list via a few favorite blogs and the comments here on Twenty Sided. Things were raw for eight years or so, but eventually everyone got better tools for dealing with the larger population.

So paving Eden seems like a good move to me, it just took a while to learn to drive on it afterwards.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.