

Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993) - McGuffin
http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/the_internet.html

======
eterm
It hurts to read this. How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is
an equal peer?

Was it just the realities of money, that an end user would rather pay a tiny
fraction of the real cost of being truly on line and pay instead with their
freedom?

We used to laugh at AOLers because they weren't experiencing the real
internet, because they sold themselves out to an online service.

Are today's ISPs with their filtering and port blocking and packet shaping,
really any better?

~~~
antocv
The masses.

We lost because of the great masses, the eternal october but on a much major
scale. The same people that still watch TV and who become numb from their
everyday medium to low-wage work, all those who are fighting against each
other to climb the ladder just a tiny amount up.

See the original internet users were scientists, officers, business people,
those early adopters who have the resources and curiosity to use and shape it
it.

Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out
further than facebook and easy entertainment. Most people dont even have a
concept of what the internet is. They just kind of randomly click buttons and
call their laptops "plaything".

Ive seen people pay for 4G but their modem only by default runs on 3G. Meh.

~~~
junto
That reminds me of this awesome picture:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png)

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thisiswrong
> Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it, is wise. By the
> turn of the century, "network literacy," like "computer literacy" before it,
> will be forcing itself into the very texture of your life.

Wow, the prediction is a decade off... but 100% correct for those who live in
the developed world!

It's funny, because EXACTLY the same could be said right now about
cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and Distributed Anonymous Corporations (DACs).
The rapid rise of Bitcoin being just the tip of the iceberg.

~~~
Sharlin
How is it a decade off? Internet was ubiquitous in developed countries already
a decade ago.

~~~
thisiswrong
Rather, in the developed world we are now online 24/7 - with the rise of 3/4G
smartphones. However, this is only so since 2009 - 2013 for most people.

------
11thEarlOfMar
The Internet is the multiplier of many huge economic forces. Some that come to
mind:

\- Productivity of a single worker: Izya, a mechanical engineering friend,
used to spend hours in the engineering library trying to find the right part
among hundreds of component catalogs. He now spends about 10 minutes browsing
the web, on his smart phone, during lunch, at the local sandwich shop.

\- Scale of an enterprise: Wal-Mart, Amazon and all companies of similar scale
are effectively IT companies. What they actually sell is simply a side-effect
of their IT operations. It is mind boggling to try to imagine the
infrastructure and logistics involved in selling $1,300,000,000 worth of
consumer goods per day.

\- Return on Investment: Even the oil barons would be green with envy at an
Instagram, or Twitter or Facebook and the absurdly low amount up front capital
paid in to establish these business.

The Internet has changed everything. All of us, from governments to CEOs to
grandmothers will spend our lives running to keep up with it.

------
shubhamjain
> The standard fee is about $40 a month -- about the same as TV cable service.

I mean WOW! Americans were able to get internet at 40$ / month in '93? I
recall, in 2003, my folks had to pay huge telephone bills even when my
internet usage didn't exceed more than 2 hrs a day (dial-up times).

~~~
eterm
Oh, that $40 is the service cost. Even in '97 I remember paying £20/mo for the
ISP, phone bills were then on top of that £20.

Then "freeserve" came out[1] and (gasp!) was free apart from the phone call.
This was a major shift. There were downsides (only 1 pop3 email account, no
newsgroups, no webspace), but it was free!

[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/177467.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/177467.stm)

~~~
crusso
Almost all residential POTS lines in the US were flat-rate, so there were no
charges here to make a local phone call. Granted, if you had to dial long-
distance to connect to the ISP, then you paid toll rates for that.

~~~
eterm
Oh, thanks for the correction and local knowledge.

------
nrmilstein
Apparently, the opening part about the internet spawning from a RAND
Corporation study is just a myth:

[http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Charles_Herz...](http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Charles_Herzfeld.htm)

~~~
gruseom
Right, and so is the bit about the network surviving a nuclear attack.

------
snori74
There's some wonderful lines in here, I particularly liked:

 _Planning has never seemed to have much to do with the seething, fungal
development of the Internet..._

And this one:

 _Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for the savage UNIX
interface of TCP /IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in user-
friendliness..._

Notice how www/web isn't mentioned? It existed, but even when the first
graphical browser came out (that same year), it wasn't clear what the point
was - like many, I was on a 2400 Baud modem so every picture or graphic on a
page would take 5 - 10 minutes to "come down the wire".

------
SideburnsOfDoom
> Military people want it spy-proof and secure.

Ah. That changed.

------
jstrate
I'm surprised articles like this are still posted on HN/reddit. Like most of
the tech you use on your iWidgets it has deep roots in the US defense budget.
Networks, GPS, digital maps, etc. Surprising this is posted here as it doesn't
fit with most of the _evil military industrial complex_ narrative that comes
with linked articles.

~~~
crusso
Like the rest of the US government, just because good things occasionally come
from the largest financial expenditures on the planet doesn't mean that the
balance of those expenditures are a good idea or that the taking of money for
those expenditures is morally justifiable.

~~~
jstrate
>good things occaisionally come

Understatement of the century.

------
anoncow
Much like schools regulate your usage of English when in school, countries
will regulate internet use.

------
jstalin
Weird, no mention of Al Gore's role in creating the Internet.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Not sure if you're just being ironic but Al Gore never claimed to have created
or invented the internet. Here's what he said:

> During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
> creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range
> of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic
> growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

He was referring to the many initiatives he sponsored and promoted during his
time as a U.S. Senator that made the internet as we know it possible. In
response to the ridicule that followed the out-of-context quote "I took the
initiative in creating the Internet," no less than Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn
wrote, "No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping
to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President."

~~~
jstalin
Yes, I was being ironic. But those quotes don't help his case much. Saying "I
took the initiative in creating the Internet" is, with or without context,
just laughable.

~~~
joering2
With a context, its not laughable to me. I don't have too much respect to Al
Gore, but I don't believe he was so dumb or thought his audience is so that
actually anyone would believe he "created" internet from a technical point of
view. But he did, unfortunately, took a part in creating internet from a legal
point of view.

------
joering2
Ain't that amazing that most human inventions were created to either satisfy
military or a porn industry.

~~~
anoncow
can you give examples for the latter?

~~~
adventured
Arguably the largest demand for consumer bandwidth over the first decade of
the Web's existence was porn. From about 1996 forward (Quake), gaming has also
helped move the needle.

These days sites like Xvideos, Pornhub etc are monsters when it comes to
bandwidth consumption, and there are dozens of major streaming porn sites.

That constant bandwidth demand has been a great catalyst in terms of
encouraging ever faster speeds.

How much content is on sites like YouTube or Dailymotion related to sex
appeal?

Facebook had intentionally built-in sex appeal aspects to it. It was for
college students after all.

Snapchat? Chat roulette? MyFreeCams & Live Jasmin (both of which generate tens
of millions in sales)? There are many porn related sites in the top 1,000
global sites. Titillation moves things forward and always will. Humans are
sexual beings.

~~~
anoncow
>Facebook had intentionally built-in sex appeal aspects to it

Do you mean the relationship status part? Interesting point.

