The information age and its consequences

People are sick of the internet. I'm sure you have noticed that things have changed a lot over the past decade. Everyone has an internet connection now, and I don't think people are actually better off because of it. Despite the great advances in data rates and computer power there are threads on here about people wanting to use dumbphones; to disconnect from social media, and unplug from the machine. Most of us know that the interent is much different now than it was back in 2000, so whats changed that has made the internet into the mind parasite that is is today. The internet before the 2000s: >Simple text and low-res graphics >Used for mostly professional and academic purposes >Technically literate userbse (mostly) The internet today: >Netflix, Youtube, PornHub, Google, Amazon >Mostly tech illiterate userbase uses it like TV, just closer to your face >Social media addiction & general addiction to computer use >Algorithms to keep people SCROO0LING There are a ton of reasons the interent has been harmful to us and our society. Im sure you can think of a handful off the top of your head. Depression, isolation, addiction, etc. This isn't something I've had a lot of time to think about, so I'd like to hear lains thoughts. Do you think that the internet has gotten out of hand? How? Not gonna site a bunch of articles but heres a couple in case you are unaware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-affects-the-brain-like-a-drug/

Personally, I think that the reason things have gotten so bad is the fast data rates. The thing that enabled the interent to be transformed into 5 websites that are basically just TV is high bandwith. The solution I have in mind is to set a limmit on data transfer speed. Something like 16 kilobytes per second for normal people. That would be enough to load basic HTML pages and text pretty fast, but way too slow to allow video streaming and high res photos. With this solution you could keep all the professional benefits of the internet like wikipedia and email, but eliminate the TV-ization of the web.

>>31377 16 KiB/s would be pretty slow for wikipedia, 128 or 256 would be much better. I think you have cause and effect mixed up though: faster speeds are due to TV-ization. It's an economic problem, not a technical one, entertainment companies want faster speeds(particularly download speeds, upload speeds are usually abysmal for consumer internet) so they can deliver more ads. I haven't actually watched porn in a long time. Usually I read my porn or look at hentai, or just use my imagination if it's late and I feel like resting my eyes. Porn videos just feel wrong. Still addicted to masturbation and the internet though. One site I really have to watch myself on is imgur. If I let myself start browsing it I can easily waste an entire hour doing nothing at all.

>>31377 > 16 kilobytes per second Good look trying TLS with that. Honestly, just enforcing slow speeds does not "solves" anything. It does not even addresses an issue. This is just "back to the old days" nostalgia. And most people lurking here weren't even born in the "old days" yet. Simply do not use the botnets and enjoy the high speed information exchange. This is the first time in history where you can share both knowledge and lewds in the speed of a lightning.

>>31382 >just enforcing slow speeds does not "solves" anything. It does not even addresses an issue. >This is the first time in history where you can share both knowledge and lewds in the speed of a lightning. This hyper-connectivity and instant gratification is the problem. The internet has become an addiction and a drain on peoples mental states. The exact speed at which the internet starts to do this (if speed really is the main problem) IDK, >>31377 thinks it should be higher, and they might be right, I'm not sure about the details yet. But what I do know for sure is that the interent is making people unhappy and isloated. Not all technology is good. Progress should not be just blindly using whatever is newest. New != good. Maybe we need to impose some limmits for the benefit of society. Finding those boundaries is what I'm trying to do.

>posting technology bad in a cyberpunk imageboard

>>31387 cyberpunk doesnt mean technology good

>>31387 >What is Serial Experiments Lain about >>31376 You shouldn't be enforcing any limits. Just get a cheaper internet plan and encourage others to do the same

>>31381 Does anyone else find it strange that porn sites have no age verification but services like Discord require to put in a birth date to view NSFW channels and if your account is locked for being reported that you're under 13, that you need to send a photo ID to Discord support to unlock it? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

>>31393 I think its deliberate. Start getting kids hooked before they know any better. Sickening. That kind of stuff should at least be pay-walled, not free with ads.

>>31391 ya im not retarded, but cyberpunk doesn't meant lets go back to the caves either

If you think that making the internet mainly text based again == going back to the caves then ooga booga grug like cave home, no bloated streaming services in cave hah aha

>>31393 Disc knows they will worst case make an alt account cause they still need disc because of their friends as they have no real alternative. Its a safe attempt to grab more data as it incurs no real cost. For pron there are thousand sources. They cant afford to build walls.

>>31398 i mean, internet services (streaming platforms) are okay i guess what is not okay is that EVERY BLOG, EVERY WEBSITE HAS UNNECESSARY JSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

>>31400 >R A G E

>>31392 Just getting a slower internet plan might help an individual get unplugged from internet addiction, but I'm thinking more at the societal level. Something like a regulation that would keep bandwith low enought so that the internet stays mostly text based. Or maybe something like a law that stop maga-corps from using algorithms & psyops to keep people addicted to the screen. The same way we regulate gambling and tobacco, we should also regulate the internet to make it less addictive and less likely to cause people harm.

>>31411 yea maybe like china. No gaming after bedtime.

>>31384 >>31382 As with everything "problematic" that humanity complains about, the issue is not the tool, the tool is great and constantly improving. I remember the days of 56k, what we have today is amazing. Even things like Twitter would be fantastic if used properly. How do you use Twitter properly? As what it says on the tin: micro-blogging. I am doing this right now. I am having this dish of pasta. This event is happening right now in my city. I am at this concert right now, here's a photo. It's great for minute-by-minute news updates. Twitter feeds during earthquakes or other happenings like that are wonderful if only for the fact that you end up with a time-stamped timeline of the event. You shouldn't use Twitter to have a persistent comment section about politics and soykafting out daily, made-up trends that everyone follows like lemmings. It's a terrible use of this tool. Yet that's exactly what people do with it. Instagram would have been very similar with photos. Imagine if everyone on Instagram posted real-life updates or interesting cell phone snaps from their daily lives, maybe on a semi-private profile that they shared with their friends. Botnet cancer aside, it would be very rich. Not all this grassroots advertising crap, influencers, whores showing their tits, etc. Give a tool, any tool to human beings, and they will manage to make the worst possible use of it. Isn't like 30% of all internet traffic porn? That's probably without counting all the pornstars' social media presence and other porn browsing on non-porn sites e.g. Reddit. Give a truly anonymous and secure method of communication to people, what do they do with it? People run everything into the ground.

>>31414 >what we have today is amazing >It's great for minute-by-minute news updates. >Give a tool, any tool to human beings, and they will manage to make the worst possible use of it I cant tell if you are for or against the current state of the internet. At first you seemed to be going "I fuarrrkING LOVE SCIENCE" mode about how great twitter and stuff is. But then you end it about how its wasted on coom brains and normal people. What exactly is your grip (if any) with the current state of things? Why? What would you change?

>>31400 Pretty much. Yeah i know, some people just want to pratice some front end with JS to get used(it's easier anyway). but when i detect MITMflare... i just facepalm.

>>31376 >SCROOLING you have to go back

Frankly, I think that the internet is driven by the same forces that drove the market to what it is today. People want to scrool? To the company that makes the most addictive website/app(not that there's any distinction between the two anymore) goes the revenue. It's not a fault of any people or demographic in particular, but a generalized cancer that has managed to subvert our entire population. Remember, even just ten years ago, when you were encouraged not to share personal info? Those days are long gone, simply because people have gotten used, as a whole, to sharing information online. What can you or I do about this? Nothing. The idea of having a societal limiter on internet speeds is patently ridiculous, absolutely no average person, having had a taste of instant gratification, would dream of having that taken away from them. So what do we do? Minimize contact with the internet. Maintain social media for the sole purpose of communication with friends outside of physical reach. Encourage face-to-face contact. Embrace nature. Read. I realize this is the exact same message so many people have nitpicked and fought over but there really is nobody to save except yourself and those around you. It's not perfect. One day, enough crumbs of your life will leak online, scrounged up by companies, to paint a reasonable picture of yourself. All you can hope then is for security in obscurity, to be a unremarkable figure in the midst of so many millions. Normalize yourselves, Lainanons! It is coming for YOU!

48KiB was fast enough for wml/xhtml wapsites. Even bigger problem would be if you made that new network, it'll be pwned overnight by bots or even big companies who can just do it for free with their solar-powered attack centers. I'm more interested in the development of a network that's immune to attacks and where you can customize everything unlike 80211 where it all relies in a set list of standards that are sometimes even to this day still pwned soykafty wps implementation uses zeroes from 'hardware rng' entropy/blatant backdoor, wps not disabled on some routers even if you set it, soykafty beacon probes, krack, not designed for anonymity, decade old local network problems like arp soykaf and more. I like how amateur ham and wifi6 got restricted/regulated beforehand due to the upcoming riots in freedomland. Even wifi/80211 networks aren't good enough and they're even trying to make 5g act like and keep up with wifi speeds so one day say goodbye to your soykafty routers and its silly firmwares and say hello to 5g. I bet the WiFi alliance gets infiltrated/extinguished next by the same people with deep pockets... *cough* mozilla *cough*.

>>31396 >ya im not retarded, but cyberpunk doesn't meant lets go back to the caves either Actually it does in case of part of European cyberpunk authors. Western Europe has/had different attitude in cyberpunk novels toward technology than Eastern Europe and both are different to the USA cyberpunk.

>>31494 >It's not a fault of any people or demographic in particular, but a generalized cancer that has managed to subvert our entire population. People have to be force-fed any decency or humanity just like children need to be force-fed their greens. This is entirely the fault of dumb sheep, nobody "subverted" anybody, this is exactly what people wanted. Companies are doing nothing but giving people exactly that. People know what the companies are taking and they don't give a damn. The nice people who tried force-feeding the greens have been killed or gagged and usually died penniless and miserable and now they're being forgotten or erased. If parents were jailed for telling their kids to eat the greens, as if they were abusing them, nobody would do that anymore. This is exactly what happened today. In fact we worship the parents that make their children fat and diseased, because that builds more capital and makes the world go round.

>>31809 >European cyberpunk authors Any recommendations? I've only read Brits and Americans.

>>31817 ...with English translations?

Yesss this is the thread for me Was one of the early evangelists for the internet. Techno-utopian, true believer, first-wave cyberpunk, the works. Holy ѕһіt were we ever wrong. And probably letting ourselves get used by the state. You know—like chumps! I'm fully off it now. The network must be annihilated. I don't care if it takes a new religion, a jihad of some kind... we only have a chance and a future if we succeed in getting rid of it. Period. No internet or bust. Those are the options, sorry everyone. I really am. Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and read now.

>>31419 People shouldn't have tools of godlike power. Like you shouldn't have private ownership of ICBMs and H-bombs. The internet is a tool of godlike power and destructiveness; we just don't notice it. When we do figure out the cost of what it's done, it'll be far too late. It's an amazing piece of technology. We should get rid of it fuсking immediately.

>>31414 >The problem isn't the tool! I kind of resent this overly-simplistic view that's technically correct but too clever by half and doesn't ever really help anything. Some tools are misused and the user should just be taught the way to properly use it, yes. But the internet isn't like a drill press or a waffle iron or multimeter or some other mundane, personal tool. It's a massive worldwide system with potential to psychologically disrupt entire civilizations with very little understanding or control. Literally nobody has a good grasp of how the internet is affecting society as a whole, or indeed our psychology as individuals. That's all still hidden in the fog. The inherent deception people slip under the door with this argument is the idea that the internet could be understood with a little effort, and everyone will just learn how to use it right like you would a power tool. But my drill press doesn't have massive ramifications for social control and the profits of the largest, richest companies in the history of our species. It's not a part of our collective unconscious; it doesn't seep into the deepest corners of every aspect of our lives. It's not something that affects every single other person on earth. It just makes holes in things. The amount of effort it would take for everyone to learn how to use the internet instead of abuse it is far beyond reasonable. It simply won't ever happen, even if it might be technically possible. There's a fundamental quantitative difference, even if there might not be a qualitative difference (I believe that there is qualitative difference too, for the record). We can't learn how to use the internet correctly. It's not compatible with our brains. This isn't just a question of incrementally learning how to do it better and disseminating education to the public. It breaks our ability to learn, so how can we master it? I know people think it's a powerful tool for learning, and it could be... It even truly is for a few disciplined and well-balanced people. But as I've stated, it isn't a useful tool for the world at large. Not really. It's spiraled out of control and now it's merely this revolting psychic vortex of neurosis and paranoia and unreality. It's a virulent and addictive form of technological schizophrenia. Too large in scale to ever begin to chip away at or understand. It's paralyzing. It has frozen us at the end of history; now we are no longer humans. We are caretakers of the network. There are no developments, no frontiers left—beyond the progress of the network. I think it's profoundly telling that even the term "tech" has come to be merely a euphemism for developing networked apps, websites, data systems. Virtually all our technology is now exclusively focused on the internet. There is nothing else left. It devoured our previous aspirations and accomplishments. It didn't simply augment them. It contains good information; like you could look up a manual for an engine and fix that engine. But that already existed. Just very slightly slower. The major additions to the internet—the psychological chaos, the inherent flux and mutability of hyper-communities—totally destroy those advantages. It's not just a big library or a very complete telephone book. It has mutated beyond those old analogs. Now it breaks our ability to engage in local communities and form stable, solidified worldviews and subjective truths. It neuters our language and overwrites all other real-life forms of communication. Hell, right now many people aren't ever seeing others face to face at any time... they're just holed up in quarantine and the internet has subverted every form of social interaction entirely.

Dont blame the internet for the deeds, people abuse it for. I dont know if people here know of douglas rushkoff (you should), he phrased things exellent on what is wrong with the net. Look up an interview with him on londreal if you have a chance, this internet is not the internet that the people who created it had in mind. If i had the chance to burn it all down i probably would take the chance, but we cant let normal peoples misuse of the greatest information access machine ever made cloud our judgment of it. There were some good points made here, but is it really good assumption that the internet is an inheretly damaging thing and not the state of man that is broken? We were headed towards the cliff long before the internet was even a thing, i banter if people wouldnt get hooked on the net it would be something else, anyone here old enough to remember pre internet tv? The internet had the potential to steer things the other way, partially it did, but most of humanity did not accept change and rather turned the net into the same consumerist hole that tv was. I dont want to tell people how to feel about computers and the net, i still see it a potentially the greatest thing there could ever be and that change might still happen. Maybe after over half the population dies and society collapses, but that same potential that once was there still is.

>>31382 >do not use the botnets >enjoy the infostorm >share "knowledge" and lewds Don't come crying to me about the alienation when it turns you into a bugman. But if we have to live with it then yeah, may as well try an avoid the really bad ѕһіt if one can manage. Most can't.

>>31826 If a tool is misused by all users, the tool might have a defective design. You can blame the people up to a point. But at this point it's beyond apparent that the internet is the problem. People are also a problem, but we can't get rid of ourselves now can we? At least I know which I would choose. See: >>31825

>>31494 >Normalize yourselves Chilling effect. This is still a win for them, not for you.

>>31387 >Being brain-dead enough to think that cyberpunk is about cool techie aesthetics and not realizing it's precautionary Have fun buying the new Facebook EEG headset and soyfacing with glee while your brain is literally scanned and harvested by the dystopian nightmare machine

>>31411 Do laws ever succeed in keeping society from numbing themselves into oblivion with drugs? No. You're getting the hierarchy backwards. Mega-corps make the laws to serve their needs; the laws don't get made by the people and successfully reign in the evil. That hasn't ever really been true, least of all these recent decades. The law and little incremental fiddly attempts to manage it won't work. It has to be a powerful social movement. Spiritual, even. We need to reject the network with an almost religious and libidinal zealotry. Ted was on to it. It's going to be a more low-level social change than most people are preparing for. We're all still thinking within the network paradigm here.

>>31810 Obviously. Which is why we need to lead them into a different ideological frenzy instead. Same goal as lots of organized religions. Keep the people from destroying themselves, even if it means pandering to their basest impulses. But transcendence is eventually possible, I think. >>31494 >>31830 One might even say... Hypernormalization? Because that's what's being described here. Notably the slow drift away from using pseudonyms and not sharing personal info towards uploading every single bit of data possible to every platform that asks. Normalizing won't inhibit it, and it won't really shield you in the long term. You can't appease. You've got to fight back if you want anything in life; this is universally true and always has been.

>>31833 >You've got to fight back if you want anything in life I have definitely come to realize that people are a lot more malliable than I always assumed. Maybe not on a grand societal scale but if dig in your heels lots of people will either listen to you or get out of your way eventually. This is a small example, but maybe illustrative: I'm sure you all have experience with being handed a needlessly invasive form by some non-governmental entity that doesn't have any business datamining you.. sign up forms and whatnot (and I assume you also have experience falsifying them). I don't remember when I started pushing back against this, but I did, and of course nothing bad happens. As long as you give the minimum information required for the person at the other end to do their job things work out just fine (obviously there are exceptions, but I try to use good judgement). I almost forgot this wasn't normal behavior until I was with my sister recently and she started complaining about how long it was taking to sign up for the SATs. I looked over at her computer screen and she was dutifully filling in her address, phone number, age, high school name, etc. I told her "you know you don't have to actually tell them any of that, right?" and she said "oh.. yeah I guess not" and left the rest of the form blank. It's like the how you don't need a latch on a horse pen because they don't realize they can push the gate open. It's not just my sister, similar automatic compliance affects all of us. I think it's important to weed that kind of thing out.

>>31832 aye. Problem is that it's hard to drop off the network without support, and it's hard to find support. I've considered a lot just moving in to a hippie commune or something. But I really want to go back to school first. >This is a small example, but maybe illustrative: I'm sure you all have experience with being handed a needlessly invasive form by some non-governmental entity that doesn't have any business datamining you.. sign up forms and whatnot (and I assume you also have experience falsifying them). I've had to do this with so many job applications it boggles the fuarrrking mind. And they make it "required" so you can't apply to the job unless you give ten different data mining companies every bit of info about you, and then they never even look at your resume, you can tell because they never even send a rejection email.

Internet isn't a problem, capitalism is.

>>31911 They both are, and imho the internet problem shields the capitalism problem and prevents meaningful real-world action and close-knit communities. Gotta go through it to get to the root.

>>31826 Its not that the state of man is broken, its that the natural state of man is in a tribe hunting wolly mammoths. Our reactions to stimuli were evolved for keeping the tribesman alive. Those reactions are still with us and they are hijacked by this terrible machine to keep us addicted. As others have stated, the full consequences of modernity are still a mystery for the most part. Our perception of the consequences of the machine is limmited to its felt effects. What it has actually done (and continues to do) to our minds is unknown, it may even be unknowable. What we do know is that people today are despressed, isolated, and atomized despite the global hive mind. Real community and relationships are over. Many of us may never experience what it is like to really belong with anyone else. I have a feeling that my experience in this system is wrong. Something isn't right. Nothing is REAL. Maybe you feel that too, but sitting at this computer every day pushing buttons is killing me inside. Nothing I do feels real. I'm not having any effect on the world. I want to kill a wolly mammoth.

The internet is actively conditioned, it's not even real anymore, it's vaporwave, it's whatever is desirable to the authority.

>>31826 You know what I find aggravating? When people post those images of Zuckerberg with the funny captions like he's an evil ailen insectoid Those are the same people who have a Facebook account and when they heard the first, second and tenth warning about FB's privacy were like >but my friends uuuuuuse it! Everyone is 100% aware that Discord is a privacy night mare, >but my friends uuuuuuuse it! But then Zuckerberg is an insectoid, how do these people look at themselves in the mirror and not feel contempt? WHY COMPLAIN, YOU MADE THIS THING SO BIG

>>31384 You do realise that if people couldn't watch videos on their computers, they would simply go back to television? Do you propose banning television, as well? Are you an anprim? You seem confused.

>>31826 The true potential of the internet is to empower your oppressors to enslave humanity. Actually technology as a whole is. China, a giant nation already uses technology to ensure 'order'. There's nothing stopping the oppressive ruling class around the world to just agree and do the same to the smaller nations they're [the lineage] allotted to and the whole world to be at an 'order'. Thank technology!

>>31963 Maybe allow some vacuum-tube AM radios, but the rest is mind poison and we've known it for decades. We can determine our own future together and refuse debasement.

>>31988 And it can't be individual opt-out, either. We have to drag the species out of this simulacra death machine and dismantle it behind us. Or just absorb into the machine and perish. Those really are the options. We have all already normalized to so much social degradation and humiliation in the name of this useless digital busybox. You don't want to see where it leads in another thirty years or so. It's not what you imagine. It's going to be more miserable than you're willing to conceive of right now, but if we don't do something that's where we're going to trap ourselves. We DO have a choice. The world always changes, but it's not just this one-way downward slope into this specific cesspit. We can still choose another way... for now.

>>31376 Say what you want about the internet, but it did allowed access to more wide forum and to more points of view. If there was no internet, someone like me would be restricted to the opinions of local powers and words of mouth, while today there is at least an option to compare and contrast conflicting narratives and see where one or the other are lying. Of course, this also allowed idiots to broadcast their idiocy far and wide, sinergysing their stupidity with stupidity of others, but this is IMHO is a problem of education rather than technology.

I see it as the case of the classic "elites are discussing what's best for the plebs". All throughout history elites were unhappy that plebeians don't behave exactly how elites of the time imagine the human ideal. As soon as there appeared elders in tribes, someone who had an opportunity to pull their heads out of the infinite grind of the animal existence, they instantly became alienated from the rest of the tribe, became dissatisfied with how their tribe behaves and started making attempts at shaping their flock behavior. Fire-keeping technology made people less respectful of elemental spirits, hanging around livestock made people less involved in their community, books make people more interested in reading books than talking to each other, recorded music is an abomination that devalues art, everyone is too busy reading newspapers now, TV ruined family gatherings in evenings, yada yada etc etc "why aren't they exactly like the heroes I imagine and strive to be myself". The truth is, TV, newspapers, music, books, livestock, fire-keeping and, of course, the Internet, are the best things that ever happened, that's why they're so loved. Only lowest of the low people get negatively affected by these best things. Guess what? They'll find a way to get destroyed by anything, and you don't have an obligation "to save them from themselves". You're not one of them. You're not even using the Internet in the same way as they do, your Internet is separate from their Internet reservations, so nearly all of the raised points about the negative impact of the Internet don't apply to you. >people >us >we These words are all over this thread. Who are those people and why do you associate with them? They're barely conscious and you, since you're on lainchain, whether you like it or not, are the technological intellectual elite, the cream of the cream of the cream of the crop. A little self-reflection: look at yourself and around you, at your pile of thinkpads, at your unfinished GNU/Linux from scratch, at your amount of knowledge, and the desire to get more knowledge. Back in the day, the only way to become like you was being born a tribe leader, in an incredibly wealthy family, or getting ridiculously rich and retreating into the old high wizard tower on the town outskirts, where, far away from the masses, nose deep in the ancient books, you would practice your arcane arts of alchemy. Today, to become like you, people just have to be curious and have the Internet connection, the path is open for anyone. You're not "people", you're the shaman of the tribe, the only thing you have with in common with "people" is your human body, the shared cultural context and a subset of language, since they won't get the "big words" you know. You don't need to think what's best for them, you can't know what's best for them since you're really far from them. Becoming conscious and aware of everything in the world is not what they want, becoming like you is not desirable. Let them decide what they want and climb to the top of the pyramid, where there are more people like you. You can't be serving two masters. Who do you represent? The few or the masses?

>>31990 You speak as if you are a time traveler. >>31494 >The idea of having a societal limiter on internet speeds is patently ridiculous, absolutely no average person, having had a taste of instant gratification This is why 5g is going to change everything. It is a great deception. Speeds will only be elevated to meet peoples limits of gratification with empty promises of "the fastest speed possible" while permitting only marginally faster speeds at outrageous costs for the sake of profit. Its like when Comcast found out how to get high speed internet through existing cables that would compare to fiber optic speeds but instead they scrapped the program because it would have been too efficient to sell their latest and greatest. People pay hundreds of dollars a month for fiber optic internet because they are promised high speeds but may only get 35mbps out of it because of throttling. >Normalize yourselves, Lainanons! It is coming for YOU! This is irrelevant, the worlds "greatest minds" in the fields of medical science and engineering are only working on how to make "better" and more marketable products. And if someone by any chance wants to create something revolutionary, it becomes bought up by the corporate machine. Internet is fuarrrk. Only use it for information and Communication for arranging offline activities. Don't become an animal bound to the machine.

>>31414 >Even things like Twitter would be fantastic if used properly. No >How do you use Twitter properly? Uninstall system32 and do a 360 >micro-blogging Botched, cancer communication methode made for idiots with small screens and inconvenient input method (phonetards). Nothing good came out of it. Microblogging made people invent a coded newspeak to constrain their thoughts inside text message length posts. Those unlucky who ate the wrong koolaid have to write "threads", a series of messages to condone relatively short ideas that could have been easily represented whilst they were using regular blogshit platforms, there are even tools to glue up these threads into singular article for ease of comprehension. It's painful to read them, but luckily the rare people that do this on twitter, have their own webpages to conduct their opinions properly. >I am doing this right now. I am having this dish of pasta. And I'm on the crapper taking a huge oily soy pumpkin spice latte, so what? I don't care. If you think you invented a new recipe for pasta or something, go to pastawiki and submit it there, stop polluting bandwidths and disk spaces otherwise. >This event is happening right now in my city. I am at this concert right now, here's a photo. It's great for minute-by-minute news updates. I could not freaking care more about this crap. If I need a list of events in %city_name%, I'd go to %city_name% events directory website. If it's an event with presentations, all talks will be published in video alongside with pdfs later that day, if it's a music concert, it doesn't need any recording since musicians reprise already released compositions with better sound quality for personal listening. You are generating pointless spectacle instead of enjoying the moment. Your photos are probably infringing privacy of everyone you're taking picture of, did you ask for their consent? I'd punch you in the face if I've seen your homosexual ass pulling up a tracking device from your pocket and pointing it at me. >Twitter feeds during earthquakes or other happenings like that are wonderful if only for the fact that you end up with a time-stamped timeline of the event. I am not a retard to settle in seismic activity zone, and I could not care less of some nigger village on other end of the disc experienced an earthquake. I's all just a spectacle to keep you consuming advertisements alongside with "news feed" and siphon your money on "charity" or accepting refugees from this village on behalf of local social security. >made-up trends that everyone follows like lemmings. You just described a bunch of these strawmen situations you put yourself into, but your strawmen are not true strawmen, so you're right. >Imagine if everyone on Instagram posted real-life updates or interesting cell phone snaps from their daily lives I'm not giving you my life in real time, CIA. Fug off. >Botnet cancer aside, it would be very rich. Hey psst kids, I heard you like open source, here's %datamining_operation% but it's open source, come log in with you real IP address and post timestamped photos with geocached metadata, we have zero log policy and totally respect your privacy - t. CIA >Not all this grassroots advertising crap, influencers, whores showing Lowest common denominator. By the way, did you just call sex workers the W-word?

>>32064 >Even things like Twitter would be fantastic if used properly. >No Most correct thought around. "Using twitter properly" is something that only exists in an engineer's theoretical frictionless vacuum. Every factor in reality is going to incentivize turning it into a corrupt psychic meat grinder and a powerful cultural menace. "It's not the tool, it's how you use it" has reasonable limits. You shouldn't expect people to "correctly" use a massively powerful, ubiquitous tool that is optimized for surveillance, manipulating politics and torturing people's brains. The people who are correctly using twitter are the people menacing our entire world right now.

As long as the internet that we "like" can still be created there, hard to take this seriously. Lainchan keeps me Scrooolling too and the "issues" aren't really endemic to it, they are just more visible.

>>32090 Exactly. The problem isn't just that people misuse technology. The problem is that people are naturally predisposed to "misuse" technology. Humans didn't evolve to deal with this much instant gratification and constant hyper-connectivity. Its like a drug. Theres no way for a normal person to use it right. It subverts the world/natural order that humans were evolved to live in. The only solution has to be to excise this electrical opium from the masses by force.

>>32090 how about things like lainchan?

>>32111 this feels like a luke smith upcummies r bad but i still use youtube type of scenario

>>32111 Recency bias of imageboard format and general low quality of posting makes it no different.

>>31376 yes and the difference is the power grab by megagcorps. That's whats made the internet into a monster

the thing i keep seeing over and over in this thread is that the internet is a pure, innocent concept that was corrupted by malicious forces. you are so close to the point but are still refusing to look the truth directly in the eye. yes the internet is exploited by megacorporations and states, obviously. but you're failing to acknowledge that arpanet, the direct parent of nsfnet and the modern internet, was developed as a surveillance and counterinsurgency weapon. through the 70s and 80s, this was arpanet's purpose in vietnam, cambodia, southeast asia, and every US overseas state/military post worldwide. in the late 1980's arpanet was reimplemented with our modern protocols like tcp/ip for the private sector as nsfnet, and it directly inherited the counterinsurgency and surveillance features of arpanet. in the early 90's nsfnet was literally given away to several consortiums of megacorps with the goal of privatizing what was to become the modern internet. from the very beginning, there was no technical or policy solution to solve what you don't like about the internet because its use as a counterinsurgency weapon against populations is inherent in the internet's first principles. it was never intended to be beneficial to you or anyone else besides corporations and states. the well-intentioned libertarian nerds who engineered it did so trusting that the government funded programs they worked under had humanity's collective best interests in mind, which is just stunning foolishness. i don't know what do to about this problem when nobody with the technical knowledge that qualifies them to discuss this topic will even bother to understand the basic factual history here.

>>32141 I think you're leaving a big part of the internet's history out, that is, its extensive use by academics before it was ever privatized. Basically they used it for e-mail.

>>32141 >ARPANET in Vietnam and Cambodia in 70's Did the evil government soil your pants again, commie? What's next? Google is founded by CIA and Facebook is implementation of DARPA's LifeLog project? Stop spamming low-quality sensationalist yellow journalism from technologically illiterate authors. Next time another soviet migrant jew publishes a book, it better be adolescent fiction. So far worked for his colleague Cory Doctorowitz: >>>/sec/12178

>FOCUS OF THE THREAD Ok so there has been some good discussion in this thread but I'm still not sure that we have gotten any closer to the heart of the problem. >What is the problem? Is it computers themselves? I dont think so. I think the problem is that computers are all networked and are used by mass media/megacorps/NGOs/states/etc to keep people mentally enslaved. CAN the internet be used for good and socially responsable purposes? Yes. Is that mostly what its used for now? No. Why? What changed to make the internet into this?

>>32145 you're talking about nsfnet, which was mentioned in the post as well as the reading material provided. do your reading and make a valid point or keep scrolling. the book is there only as a surface-level starting point for further research. >>32151 levine fuarrrking hates doctorow, as any person with a grip on reality should. he's spoken publicly about his valid contempt for everyone involved in that boingboing orbit as well as every other gen x web hippie larping as a network freedom fighter. come back to this thread when you have an argument. or don't; you very clearly don't belong here.

>>32153 >heart of the problem >>32141

>>32153 >CAN the internet be used for good and socially responsable purposes? Yes. Is that mostly what its used for now? No. Why? What changed to make the internet into this? I happen to have thought quite a bit about this and I think the only responsible way of using the internet is, ironically, to get rid of everything social about it. The best and most noble use of the internet is as a work tool. It should be used that way. >but muh communities! NO! Let them die. Your anime tiddy chatroom isn't doing anything good for you. >but my creative venues! NO! Let them die. The internet only creates memes, memes are not "creative". Create somewhere else and use the internet to sell it. >but muh news! muh Zeitgeist! NO! fuarrrk the Zeitgeist! Get slower news. Slow news are way better - Less of a mandatory, cooperative "narrative" - Less opportunism and sensationalism - Better written and in-depth - Reading a long article doesn't fragment your attention as much Use the internet to buy your newspaper subscription. It can be digital, if you want. The problem is not digital vs. analog or screen vs. no screen. The problem is purely environmental. You have to stop multitasking. The internet is a place, like your kitchen counter, your toilet, your bed, with its own subset of activities. I say the internet, not your computer. Your computer used to be a container for this environment, now the situation is reversed. The computer is contained in the internet. This is wrong. Changing this isn't even too dramatic. It only takes a bit of willpower and completely cutting yourself out of all social media and every environment where social media encroaches too much (this includes imageboards that are too preoccupied with current events... lainchan may join those ranks soon). I know that this is unpleasant because you love the Internet, and you want to marry it. I'm telling you to pump and dump it, in a way, to use it for dirty things such as buying what you need or using it for work. Imagine how it would be if the commercial internet were completely separated from the social internet. Do you feel disgust when you walk into a store? Why? It's just a shop. The reason why things are so awful today is because the supermarket has slowly expanded out into people's lives, but this only happens because people have started doing everything in the supermarket. You can't have a good life if you do everything in a supermarket. Why would you fuarrrk, there, in the fish aisle, with the security cameras rolling? The only way to revert this is to create a boundary between your life and the supermarket. The commercial internet will never go away, so just use it for that. I know I'm being hypocritical here by typing this very post, but I am asking you to make a mental effort and imagine a few steps ahead. I would have typed this somewhere else in a journal. I would have done something else with this time like call a family member. I would have had a walk outside. You are probably thinking that this conversation is more worth than walking out in supermarket world, but if you also did this, when we used the internet to talk, we would both be enriched and we would have more things to say. Actually if this exchange happened on an interpersonal level via e-mail this conversation would be much richer. I'm not even going to say "if everyone did this..." because I think it's a weak argument. Just think about this one conversation happening via e-mail instead of an imageboard. Just the slower lane.

>>32161 A little asterisk. When I say "work" I mean as a tool to get things done. It doesn't mean "your job" or "being productive" as in producing something. Participating to a group chat for a project is "work" as in getting things done. The internet here is just a tool, a communication medium between people. But I also mean the same when I think of sending an e-mail to a family member so ask how he's doing. A needs to speak to person B and he'll do it via the internet. This is a good internet. This is a bit abstract but you know very well that this isn't exactly the motivator that brings people online, especially when it comes to social activities. In this case I don't have to relay a message to anyone in particular, this is just lounging around. This imageboard-surfing activity is self-serving. This is the bad internet.

>>32162 >A little asterisk. When I say "work" I mean as a tool to get things done. It doesn't mean "your job" or "being productive" as in producing something. Participating to a group chat for a project is "work" as in getting things done. The internet here is just a tool, a communication medium between people. But I also mean the same when I think of sending an e-mail to a family member so ask how he's doing. lol isn't this basically what Lain's Dad says?

>>32163 well look at these desktops, do you see any entertainment here? look at those post-its this is a man at work!

>>32164 That's disgusting, no wonder lain never asked him for advice on dealing with the wired.

>>32165 The Chad Computer User >Knows the difference between the real world and computers >6 screens but no rice for maximum efficiency >zero inbox >gets soykaf done >clean workstation >no conflicts in his life nor his machine, satisfied and happy The Virgin "Wired" >can't tell reality from fiction >extremely riced poser WM >gets spam from dead people >spends all her time online, accomplishes nothing >extremely untidy >as internally conflicted as her exploding hardware

>>31376 >simple text and low res graphics text was never simple, since 30 characters are reserved for controlling the terminal in weird ways >inb4 b-b-but i u are no smart because u dont understand things (i dont understand either) you are retarded. low res is crap since its equivalent to looking at a window screen, and is physically painful (screendoor effect / moire)

>>32141 So what? Just because it was created with nefarious purposes doesn't mean that it can't be repurposed. Though replacing IP+DNS is a must.

>>31419 I.E normal people and retards should've never been give the PC.

>>32558 We were all retatds at some point

>>31376 Have you seen the film Lo and Behold, by Werner Herzog? I think this may be Herzog's most important film right now. This thread reminded me of a scene... A bereaved family harassed by Internet users with gory pictures of their daughter, who died in a violent car accident. The grieving mother says that the Internet, for all its allure and promise, represents the Antichrist--a seductive harbinger of the doom of the human race. Later in the film Herzog floats the idea that perhaps the Internet could be thought of as the collective consciousness of the world's people. If the Internet is our collective consciousness, we are a race of schizophrenic, depressed degenerates. If the Internet is our Antichrist, if it signals the end of the human race, our road to oblivion will be a slow-motion nightmarish marathon of hyperreal events. Every Wired human on Earth will deny his own doom until he finally starts missing meals or gets mugged in the street. How will the coming decades unfold? Will we allow the Internet to amplify the worst of our qualities, accelerating our demise? Will the best of humanity prevail in meatspace and so conquer the Wired? Who knows....

>>32173 >text was never simple, since 30 characters are reserved for controlling the terminal in weird ways they were highly useful in the age of dummy terminals.

>>32173 >text was never simple Can you tell the difference between a plain html page and Netflix? Clearly text is much simpler than the abomination that is the modern internet. The point you are missing is that keeping things text based prevents the consumerization/TV-ization of the wired. The point isnt that ASCII or UTF-8 is perfect, its that you cant stream cuties on netflix if your browser can only process unicode.

The internet was certainly better when most users' access was tied to a set physical location (I'll make exceptions for early mobile connections primarily used by relatively large, cash-flush businesses to perform field diagnostics). But in my eyes, internet-wide search indexing was the real killer. Search indexing requires results to be delivered in one of a few ways: 1) an algorithm is tuned to provide the most likely desired result based on what other people visit after similar searches. This naturally clusters a few domain results at the top, which snowballs into the current site-drought we have now and gives the few major sites far too great an influence. 2) random results that might fit: nobody uses this and rightly so, it's worthless to anyone actually trying to find something. 3) paid results: sites which can afford to pay for result ranking early on can snowball their userbase and keep buying out ad/result space, eventually pricing out new competition 4) some combination of the above None of these are good solutions, because internet-wide search indexing is not a good solution. It's the lazy solution that needs a lot more work but nobody thinks their new way will succeed because user habits are too hard to change. >>31384 I don't think speed is the issue as much as mindset. Even slow mobile connectivity will be more destructive than a fast hardwired connection. With a mobile connection, such as a smartphone, data is available regardless of your mental state and accessible without preparation. This rewires your mind to expect instant gratification at a level which can only be satisfied by telecommunications. With a restricted physical location (and restricted device choice), gratification is associated with a specific ritual, such as sitting down and logging into the computer. I don't think any law will come about that changes or solves this problem. I think the only way it will end is if there is a widely-known and widely-exploited set of vulnerabilities in wireless infrastructure to keep people from wanting to use wireless networks of any sort - or, of course if some cataclysm destroys electronics the world over

>>32670 Just tell people radiowaves cause cancer and declare your town a skip zone because you're running a radiotelescope in the area. Everyone who needs Interned would have to go to retrofitted payphone booths with ethernet port and power plug in them.

>>32666 text based mediums never fixed anything every one ive seen is trash and in the worse ones filled with pretentious idiots who see themselves as some kind of grown up because they are using a text-only medium the internet was largely full of idiots to begin with actual useful content (academic journals) have images and sometimes videos (only sometimes, since garbage tech gets in the way), because you have to be a god damn idiot to restrict yourself to text

>>32670 >The internet was certainly better when most users' access was tied to a set physical location >t. unilateral paradigm buumer no, it wasn't. and right now it's tied to the desktop language (EN, pt-BR, etc)

>>32670 >The internet was certainly better when most users' access was tied to a set physical location. I think this is a HUGE part of the problem that I haven't thought of before. Having the internet available anywhere and at any time is a large factor in causing its negative effects. Never in human history has anything been so ubiquitous and omnipresent as the internet. This omnipresent internet does not conform to the normal experience humans are evolved to have with the real/natural world. You are right to point out that there is no ritual involved in using the internet anymore. >gratification is associated with a specific ritual, such as sitting down and logging into the computer. This is a big part in the addictiveness of the internet & social media & streaming, etc. In the real world gratification only comes after the exertion of effort. E.g. you need to take out the toaster to make a sandwich. Although this might seem minor, this simple act or ritual involved in making the sandwich is fundamental to the realness of the world. Everything in life follows this format of effort -> gratification. Just like drugs, the internet/social media/pornography subverts this relationship of action and reward. >This rewires your mind to expect instant gratification at a level which can only be satisfied by telecommunications. This technology is totally unnatural to us. It debases our subconscious understanding of reality.

>>31376 Quirky

>>31398 I, for one, want the ooga booga pure html net

>>31376 >>31377 >>31381 >>31384 Look at all the cyberpunk stories. All the people lost in the cyberspace like being hooked on drugs. Everyone imagines himself the hero, but most would be just the sad drugged out side character. It takes a lot of self reflection to be the protagonist, not the npc

The problem has been the take over by corporate entities (like in every aspect of life) combined with a capitalist economic system. The only reason to innovate is to capture your attention to get that sweet sweet growth, these companies do not act in the best interest of the human kind but in the interest of a few major shareholders and/or governments. I feel like the internet is fragmenting anyway, countries are starting to isolate themselves more and more, they will start following other communication standards so I am somewhat optimistic that public, free alternatives are going to get popular.

Silicon Valley ruined it by being driven by greed and god complex

>>31393 That's because Discord collects data on its users and the US has laws against collecting data from minors under 13.

>>32994 Welcome, comrade

>>31376 Yeah that's all good and all but I think "fixing" the internet isn't as hard as it would seem. Only a couple things cause the majority of the problems. First problem, centralization. Most people flock to the largest websites, running a one-stop-shop website for billions is difficult and expensive, this means whom ever is running these serves must have a way and a interest to run them. Of course this is ads and keeping people locked onto your website allows you to make more money from these ads. Second problem, bloat. The modern internet is a swiss army knife built out of wood shavings and spit. Html is a xml markdown format, meant for text documents linked together with hypertext, the oldest browsers where just html document views that could follow html. As time went on these document viewers wanted to add user customization thus CSS was born, pretty soon people realized that their websites can send over CSS themselves to make their website have their own flare. Beyond that Javascript was born for wiring up fancier stuff like creating forms to be sent to a server and etc. But as you can see today, each of these have been taken to their logical extreme and everything has been forced onto a system meant to display documents, everything forced onto it runs slower and generally worse than it should because because of how it's constructed. I think that's the root of the majority of the Internets problems, back in the aftermath of the dot com bubble and the rise of smart devices was the golden age for the Html internet, most of peoples daily content was blogs run by a devise set of people doing what ever they want and forums run by small groups. This started to collapse due the ease any one could replicate the blog and forum styles on social media. I feel most of webs infrastructure is fine, domain namespaces are kind of annoying but it's not horrid, the majority of the problem comes from web-browser internet. Something like git uses the internet but isn't funneled through the internet, RSS feeds act as a website and browser agnostic system for getting updates on content. I endorse the idea using the internet without browsers and giants. This doesn't solve all the issues but it creates a space for tech-literate enough people to exist shielded away from social media trappings. With less time taken away scrolling and cooming, people can work on more for-filling things, and with this all being built off the general programming community bases of sharing things, then I believe that's a pretty good system. Sure this can still by corrupted but at least we could have another golden age of people making and sharing soykaf.

>The internet before the 2000s: >>Simple text and low-res graphics >>Used for mostly professional and academic purposes >>Technically literate userbse (mostly) Go to https://wiby.me and find stuff you like >>Netflix, Youtube, PornHub, Google, Amazon >>Mostly tech illiterate userbase uses it like TV, just closer to your face >>Social media addiction & general addiction to computer use >>Algorithms to keep people SCROO0LING don't use them >https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-affects-the-brain-like-a-drug/ don't watch porn then dude, we have a drug board in this website

It's obvious that technology are controlling its users, but what if Ted knew about free software and the hackers who are trying to take control of the technology? Modern society can fuarrrk a human being. Best thing is to ignore society? How possible is that? Going to live to the woods? Be egoist? who knows...

>>32586 yes, precisely 50 years ago >>32666 >muh 1d chess <video> is a feature, LARPing glitterboy. anything thats "declarative" is fine, for documents http://longpoke.github.io/750602224faffeaf812ff2512e164e7ccefc5c8532868b5b6529b8f9e38327f9.html >the baby bummer even manages to complain about Cuties in its markoff chain response anyway my point was that ASCII is even worse than text because its far more complex

>>31411 This is just glaringly ignorant. There were people addicted to text messaging and 128k internet on pentium 2's when I was 18 in 2002. Limiting the speed does absolutely nothing. People were addicted to irc and usenet before that. People get addicted to things because life is alternately boring and horrible most of the time. There is no cure for this but to encourage people to limit their own Consciousness, and you do this by keeping busy. The problem is you. You're the problem. You need to realize most people need to be fascinated by bullshit of some kind to keep them from fuarrrking life up worse. People listened to radio all day and to TV. People were religious before that. It's all the same thing, just avoiding the brutal grinding nature of being alive. If you get sick of people, take a year offline and read books and stuff. I just did that last year. I just checked my email and used wikipedia. Since no one uses email socially anymore, it's very chill.

>>33148 You had my interest until you inserted the forced wojak derivative. Not even going bother finishing the last paragraph.

>>33286 It's so funny that of all the meme words that get thrown around, only that one always triggers someone without fail. Porn is one hell of a drug, isn't it?

It seems that the issue is that people think it is an extension to reality. Everyone brought their soykaf on the internet since social media became a thing. With that and a handful of tech companies controlling the masses all of that seems to be contained in that center. We might be able to break away from that and I see alot of threads of lains trying to find or make the "alternative internet" away from these companies and governments. I guess it's just a matter of how and who is going to initiate that. Kinda like the /g/ternet thing but less meme ridden.

>>33330 There are already scores of existing functional alternate webs. Freenet, i2p, tor hidden services, ipfs, zeronet, city meshnets, and old disused stuff like telnet, gopher, ssh pubnix and so on. It already exists. SocMed works by being general enough and simplistic enough for general use by morons. You can't change the fact that the majority of people are fuarrrking degenerate, ignorant assholes. And you can't change the fact that any alternate internet will either be simple enough for mass adoption and this ruined, OR bleakly empty as all of the above mentioned stuff is.

>>33337 >Freenet, i2p, tor hidden services, ipfs, zeronet, city meshnets, and old disused stuff like telnet, gopher, ssh pubnix and so on. Sounds interesting. I should check that out. >You can't change the fact that the majority of people are fuarrrking degenerate, ignorant assholes. And you can't change the fact that any alternate internet will either be simple enough for mass adoption and this ruined, OR bleakly empty as all of the above mentioned stuff is. You're right. I can't nor will I try to. That's just the nature of it all. The only thing you can do is keep running from the ignorance until you run out of road or can't keep building it anymore.

>>33337 >You can't change the fact that the majority of people are fuarrrking degenerate, ignorant assholes. as if people outside of pleb normal person spaces were sophisticated gentlemen unfettered by vice

>>33350 Don't put words in my mouth. I mean it's literally everywhere in all human and most animal societies

>>33350 In a way at least it's something different then the usual soykaf.

>>33350 you strongly implied that only people with big brains can access the "alternative web", while the most common motivator is just the need to skirt the law or having being derezzed from the mainstream socials

>>33402 I did not, that's your projection. I think everyone is a degenerate idiot, even me

>>33407 >I did not, that's your projection. You said >SocMed works by being general enough and simplistic enough for general use by morons. and then you said >any alternate internet will either be simple enough for mass adoption and this ruined So mass adoption by retards is what ruins things. Then you describe the failing point of the alternatives as that they're "bleakly empty", directly opposite to the idea that they're just as full of complete morons who cannot form basic arguments, which is what I said in the post that you dismissed as "putting words in your mouth" and apparently you yourself believe.

>>33411 You're right I should have been more clear: It's different kinds of terribleness

>>33412 How are they different?

>>33286 this is kind of awkward but I really meant "Consuming" but I was quite tired at the time and strung letters that sounded enough like the word to myself. I don't care what your consuming; porn, youtube, twitter, etc, it's still all wasted time and should be mitigated.

>>31837 I actually forgot this myself too. I guess this would be an effect of people constantly having to fill forms all their lives that they are trained since they can pick up a pencil and write that you must fill everything out.

>>31837 My own approach used to be to ask myself, is this important? Why do they even need this data? Do I even need the services offered? The answer to the last was so frequently "no" that I mostly stopped asking and automatically just close the tab now. If I need an account registered to view content, I skip the experience altogether. It's not like I'm missing much. This is more mental hygiene than security by the way.

>The internet before the 2000s: >Simple text and low-res graphics >Used for mostly professional and academic purposes >Technically literate userbse (mostly) So OP, how old are you? I'm not trying to be a dick, I just think that you're romanticizing an era that you didn't actually live through because all of your claims are completely untrue you absolute baby. In reality the internet before the 2000s was mostly used for piracy, as in, content distribution which is what it is mostly used for today and social stuff. Usenet and IRC (the so called "heroin of the internet" according to alarmist articles from the mid 90s) were just as absorbing as modern social media and even more mental and chaotic. And back in the 90s there were already people like you making the same inane claims, with the same arguments romanticizing the 80s internet. Internet didn't change because humans didn't change. There are no good old days.

>>33581 Not the person you are addressing, but I lived through the "romantic era" of the internet. It wasn't really all that different from today, but there's now hotspots of normal people like on social media. Lainchan feels a lot like old BBSs, but more anonymous (which, let's face it, has its detriments - specifically in making longer term connections; that isn't a value judgement, so please don't pick it apart as one). There definitely was more technically literate folks, but there was also noobs. The biggest difference, however, is people could be cured of their noobiness or were basically expelled. Can't do that now. I like lainchan particularly because it has that same standard: retards get called out and eventually disappear, and the dedicated to learning/self-improvement/etc. stick around and enrich the culture.

>>33286 Is this how edgy everyone is here?

>>33582 I think what people miss in the romantic era of the internet is that a better sense of freedom of expression that is lost in the common person part of the internet. In all sense of reality I think that is what we constantly call back to when we start feeling nostalgic about the old net.

>>33585 Pretty stupid to be nostalgic about something that exists Present Day, Present Time, HAHAHAHAHA. wtf do you think lainchan is?

>>33345 >And you can't change the fact that any alternate internet will either be simple enough for mass adoption and this ruined, OR bleakly empty as all of the above mentioned stuff is. You don't even need an alternate internet. A big part of the reason the old internet was so much better for us was because all the very stupidest people hung out in very popular places like yahoo or even places we'd never even know about. There'd be a landing page for their ISP and from there they'd navigate to some corporate hole in the wall forum and they'd stay there because there was no search engine to funnel them together. There were tons of these soulless uncared for dumping grounds but they're all so inconsequential we don't even remember their names now. Meanwhile smarter users knew there were forums on yahoo or myspace and maybe went there but we spent most of our time in other places I'm missing some things here but the general point was the internet was segregated. Eventually some places got enough gravity that they sucked out a lot of the better users and you had to deal with idiots to get at the main cluster of users you want to talk to. But I realized we don't really need to spend a lot of time on the popular parts of the web. Just find 10 cozy places with a steady trickle of traffic and you'll never need to see the dumb web except for the news and maybe when reddit shows up in your search results and it has what you need. Even reddit isn't horrible as long as you avoid the places that always pop up on the front page. I've been using a lot of forums that have fallen out of popularity, not geeky places mostly, just places and the remaining userbases are a lot more tolerable and like the older internet. As for saving the rest of humanity? You can't, at best you can ridicule them for their dumb ideas. Dumb people think whatever they think the rest of the world wants them to think so don't debate them they'll feel smart for it, either ignore them or do your part by making them feel stupid. They'll get tired of it. You don't need most of the people on the internet. Folks forget how small and slow the old internet actually was. How imageboard about lainchan's speed used to be the norm and that for years even 4chan threads would last for weeks. Part of me remembers IRC and usenet as being vast and limitless sources of high quality content but this is not true. You could page through the entire list of groups and public channels. You probably wouldn't read the names of every single one but it was feasible and most of them would be empty or full or morons back then and yet you rarely would interact with those people. Compared to now there is even more good content but like 1995 you gotta go looking for it because it's not going to be in the top of modern search results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7QEWz-72bw

>>32042 That last paragraph was quite the spiel. But you're right; things haven't changed much.

>>33588 I was referring to the common parts of the internet or the old services that used to dominate the internet. That seems to be what people call back to when they start thinking about the old net. Obviously Lainchan doesn't fall into this. I can't see why it would.

>>33588 /g/ for troons

>>33581 Not him but while it's true that the early 2000s already had developed the same mechanics that rule the internet today, there was a lot less tension because there wasn't as much of a generational gap, and it's undeniable that there was enough of a technological barrier that everyone who had his brain completely switched off would avoid it (a huge number of people who have Facebook today were the people who didn't know where the on switch was on a computer). In the late 2000s and early 2010 a whole generation who had never known a pre-smartphone era joined in and pretty much everyone else had to follow - including the older people who ignored the web up to that moment.

>Mostly tech illiterate userbase uses it like TV, just closer to your face I'm tech-literate, but I use computer like TV, and yes, closer to face. Large screen let's focus more on task because less peripheral data enters mind.

>>33609 Interesting point. Taking that thought a step further you could point to how the internet has become a REQUIRED part of society since the 2000s. Every agency, store, and organization requires you to be a part of the network. You can't find a job, buy some food, or rent a hotel room without using the internet. I know this isnt totally the case yet but it will be soon. The writing is on the wall. Soon it will be totally impossible to live in society without being connected to the machine.

>>31381 I used to browse internet in 16Kb/s speed back during the dialup days and it was pretty okay. These days sites are so bloated that it seems these speed rates are too slow to browse them.

>>31376 Honestly, just remove angloids from the Internet and you would improve the internet 100x times than what it is now.

>>33618 I've dabbled in other communities and they were exactly the same as the English speaking ones, if not dumber.

>>33617 Find an add on that can disable some of the un-needed bloat. I'm sure those exist.

>>33639 Sure, but their idiocy would be contained instead of being spilled globally.

>>33640 My reply was to the guy who thought 16Kb/s speed was too low to browse an online encyclopedia. Honestly what does an online encyclopedia even require other than text, images and videos(that don't need to be 1080p, even 240p videos is enough to see clearly what's going on screen).

>>33657 >Honestly what does an online encyclopedia even require other than text, images and videos Javascript to process your donations. Have you donated? If everyone gave 1$ right now we wouldn't be starving, we're literally about to shut down unless you donate, please donate to Wikipedia! Please! You're not a stingy asshole are you? Don't you love having this free and completely unbiased source of information that is democratically open for contributors such as you?*

>>33661 To be fair Wikipedia works just fine without js.

>>33665 Obviously it does if Javascript is only used to process donations.

>>33657 Interactive formulas, graphs and models maybe? Physical models of objects and processes? Why should everything adhere to 30 year old half-assed attempt at hypertext and what exactly is "online encyclopeida", is there any difference between "offline" encyclopedia apart from storage location?

>>31377 Wikipedia is garbage these days. If you use and like Wikipedia, you're part of the problem.

>>33696 for politics, sure. but for anything concrete like math and cs, you couldn't be further from correct.

>>33697 Its a shame that it has come to this. The only articles you can actually trust on Wikipedia are ones that can have zero political inclination and are easily verifiable, anything else almost certainly has a massive war waging in the edit history and talk page about how to portray the information in the most politically advantageous way. I only figured this out because I read an article for an event I was involved in and saw it peddling falsehoods and had been locked to stop anyone from correcting them.

I don't think there's any surprise in this. People will take free things. Benevolent developers and profit seeking corporations have worked hard for two decades to turn something obscure and weird into "free goodies" that everyone can use. They give it away for the price of watching some ads here and there. Nobody opposed this trend in a tangible way back then so the trend completed, people took the free goodies. Now that everyone is inside, this isn't your house anymore, it's everyone's house and your small opposition is doomed to be intangible. I find that the essence of the cyberpunkish / lainchanish / hackerish thing that people do around here is basically just an escape from human interaction and the anxiety they have towards it. It is the most common factor I can think about regarding this place. The way the masses took over the internet with their money and consumer willingness must feel to the average lain like they had finally found a nice quiet spot to escape from human interaction, only to have the social animals find frequent it. Lain wants the quiet place so they escape to some invalid half-aesthetic half-ass crypto fringe insider trade and then realize they need the human-produced content of regular people even if they hate intereacting with them. At the end of the day, people will take free things and nice quiet spots for themselves, so whatever new quiet spot you have is either too desolate for the masses, or is alraedy theirs. There's no real technological workaround for this, unless you're okay with total loneliness.

>>33732 My favorite is when you casually mention something you were present for in person and some keyboard warrior accuses you of lying because it isn't mentioned on wikipedia.

>>33749 Ya, that or going on about the place you're from. Pretty telling where they got their information. Kind of handy though, having a builtin retard alert.

>>33749 Any specific examples.

>>33740 >escape from human interaction and the anxiety they have towards it. False. The average top site actually have very low form of interaction ever since the popularity of memes. If you go to reddit, the most voted post is memes, the most voted reply is the most memetic of value jokes and catchy phrase. There's no content, it's like everybody is trying to be a stand-up comedian on their own soapboxes. Actually the thing is they're all trying to be "4chan" and I'm not surprised most of the format of old and new memes originated in it. If there's a simple way to phrase it, it is that the internet became 9gag and nothing is ever discussed seriously. Memes aside, the other part of it is "flex" and people just want to show people how they're more superior and enjoy their privileges, snap a photo of it to enrage their "friends" or followers to do the same which ends up into a perpetual cycle of pissing contest and pointless consumerism. Maybe it is the fog of war, the information age is really good though, there's a lot of content out there but quality or professional human interactions are very rare and maybe it's because the commoners in top sites aren't even in the same level. I'm not mad though, it's just that I feel like the people who got "addicted" into the 2010+ internet haven't gone through the first stage yet which I've already overgrown back in the dial up days.

>>33151 I had great fun exploring the old websites the wiby search comes up with. Saw everything from juggling organisations, indepth Tolkien sites, to a group called Drunks Against Mad Mothers from Pennsylvania. It's great.

>>32064 >I'd punch you in the face if I've seen your homosexual ass pulling up a tracking device from your pocket and pointing it at me. You make some great points, I just wish lainons in general would stop with the casual sexism/homophobia/transphobia in general. We all are smart enough to recognize and acknowledge the alienating effects of capitalism, especially with regards as how it shaped the internet (it is the topic of this thread after all). I'm not calling you a bigot or anything, I don't think that's productive. But we should all be able to recognize that capitalism, authority and control structures in general have much to gain (and already have) from this kind of grassroot discriminatory language. We cannot be free if we still practice exclusion, even without a state/corporate overlord to tell us so.

>>32064 >I'd punch you in the face if I've seen your homosexual ass pulling up a tracking device from your pocket and pointing it at me. You make some great points, I just wish lainons in general would stop with the casual sexism/homophobia/transphobia in general. We all are smart enough to recognize and acknowledge the alienating effects of capitalism, especially with regards as how it shaped the internet (it is the topic of this thread after all). I'm not calling you a bigot or anything, I don't think that's productive. But we should all be able to recognize that capitalism, authority and control structures in general have much to gain (and already have) from this kind of grassroot discriminatory language. We cannot be free if we still practice exclusion, even without a state/corporate overlord to tell us so.

>>34468 Yawn. Ugh left fuarrrk off, I used to believe in all this garbage but when will you people realize it's just a total fraud. Every single aspect of your movement just seems to be designed to make connections and community bonds steadily more impossible and neurotically policed, so you'll never be able to exercise power. You won't ever have the numbers again. You've castrated yourselves.

>>34549 What is this garbage you seem to think I believe in? What do you mean by "having the numbers"? I don't see how being kinder and empathetic to each other results in communities and relationships becoming harder to form. Plus I don't see how this has anything to do my my metaphorical testes.

>>34550 Alright have fun with it then, ignore the endless subdividing of the movement with culture ѕһіt and getting screwed in every single battle against capital

nice ironic post considering it’s on a site like lainchan.

>>34550 Also ironic to say this in what seems to be at least marginally a Tedposting thread. Oversocialization is the concept you're missing. It's nice to be nice and all but to the extent it's been taken to in this era, it does in fact strongly prevent bonding and increase paranoia and isolation. Does that mean the answer is to just start saying slurs? Of course not, but some post-leftists have naively interpreted it that way. It means you get back to basics. Real leftism, not the kind where you have to learn a whole dictionary of new lexical phrases and etiquette that keeps out everybody except the overproduced elite who have nothing better to do but sit around reading books and cashing trust fund checks until they're 35 or whatever. Rolling together all these other small-demographic agendas into the movement will not help you, it will demolish the left (already accomplished) and keep it from ever rebuilding (still in progress).

>>34601 Fastest I've ever seen it summed up: "Instead of eat the rich, now it's meet the rich."

>>34601 I'm a part of some leftist/leftist-adjacent spaces in meatspace and I really don't see how being inclusive has been detrimental to us in general. On the contrary, it allows us to attract more people, after all already marginalized people are more receptive to leftists ideas because of the reality they experience. I'm not talking about corporate "wokeness" or the suppression of class-related discussion, even in "leftist" spaces (read: liberal). This indeed holds real progress back, but at the same time does not mean that we should ignore all systems of oppression based on anything other than class, because (almost) all forms of oppression have their roots in Capital, especially in our postmodern societies where Capital has already captured everything, even our culture and social life.

I don't know if this video analysis on Lain is old news or not, but I just stumbled across it and think it might be interesting to some of the anons posting in this thread (as it touches on some of the concepts brought up). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjtpQWDmEqw

>>34671 I went to one of those and it was just a bunch of unbearable trust fund kids who nevertheless were pretending to be rough and downtrodden. People who will be guaranteed to switch due to their financial interests when the cards are down and will probably convert into conservatives in middle age to reduce the taxes on their investment accounts or whatever. Some of them even had bartender or server jobs despite not needing any paychecks, just for the cred or maybe to meet people? Ugh they were untrustworthy freaks. Hopefully your experiences were different though. Every time I've met a working class person who identified as left, I got to know them a bit and then bam, guess what? Well-off family, massive financial safety net, probably a college fund, liberal arts degree from an expensive school... I've never seen an exception, they've always been frauds just pretending to be lower class. But maybe that's just me. I can tell you one thing - those bastards will NEVER enact change. If they do, it will be a horrible change. I honestly hope they don't do anything because I couldn't ever imagine them doing something that won't just be a huge surrender or stumble backwards.

>>34671 >>34770 And I don't believe we should ignore everything that isn't class, but class is by FAR the biggest one. Like there's an enormous gulf like the space between stars between that and other factors, and recent efforts have obscured that and hamstringed everything, as I've said. If you chop off the top five or ten percent of every single identity group, the majority of those groups who aren't rare and very wealthy are almost universally similar. Try it sometime and look at the results. So yeah, the other factors are valid but you can't trust them. Who ends up representing these identities in leftist orgs? A few rare and bizarrely wealthy token members of those identities. Who (I'm sorry) are not suffering one fuarrrking bit, those people have and always will be just fine. So it's bankrupt! It's just a way for upper-class layabouts and wreckers to hide in the movement and pretend to be marginalized. They will also follow their own material interests and veer the entire thing off course, make it useless. Lower class people will see that instinctively and walk away, and as I said you'll never get the numbers. You're now doomed to never be able to win but really these people just want to have the most correct ideology and think actually fighting for interests and winning is gauche. It's the poor people who are getting the ѕһіt kicked out of them non-stop by the whole world, that's the common uniting factor. Obscure class by making it into another part of a bunch of factors (and one that is mysteriously never mentioned anymore in favor of the other ones) and you break the whole concept. That's not leftism anymore, it's some weird bullѕһіt that US intelligence made up in the cold war to break movements like yours. Seriously, they are the ones who wrote the books. This was specifically designed to reduce collective power and organization. It's insidious. Want to support black people or whatever? Work shoulder-to-shoulder towards a common goal. Look for people who are in your class and want the same real, tangible things out the fight. Not stupid confusing ideas you need a degree to understand. Kick out the rich kids who think that having a bunch of identities stapled to their name and bank account makes them left. They will be traitors every single time.

>>34770 It is unfortunate that this has been your experience, I don't know where you live, but where I am the "unbearable trust fund kids" don't try to fit in with the downtrodden, I guess they know that they have it good, and don't see the point in pretending to be oppressed. They tend to congregate with their own kind, which makes them just as dangerous when they eventually gain access to positions of power. >>34773 Now we seem to be coming to something of an agreement. I know that infiltration of leftist orgs by repressive powers is and always was a thing, and it's effective because it causes working class people to turn against their own in addition to the "token" bourgeois minorities you were talking about earlier. It's a gambit without a downside for anti-leftist powers, really. They get to weaken the movement by making the working class further ostracize some of their own members, and like you said,waste time and energy in the process. However, it is a fact that poor people can be and also are gay, trans, women, immigrants, etc, and disproportionately so. I am convinced that making an effort to include these people will be more effective to combat the token infiltrators than systematically rejecting them. It is true that in the US, leftist movements have been thoroughly fuarrrked by COINTELPRO and others, and there is an understandable defiance of everything related to identity politics. But it is often those who have been doubly fuarrrked by the system (once because of their class, and another time because of who they are) that understand best the structures of oppression around them. Work shoulder to shoulder with everyone of your own class, whoever they are.

>>31376 Leave social media use alternatives. Destroy silicon valley and the problem is solved

>>34468 Thanks for thought policing my post, fellow comrade. I do agree that capitalism and it's control structures gain it's power from pondering towards lowest common denominators of consumerism: women (as if biological sex should ever be accounted in goods consumption models), homosexuals, queers and other sexual deviants and slackers. Perhaps, putting them all together into labor camps along with bourgeoisie would render a higher utilization of their wasted potential. Sincerely yours, comrade in struggle - Emmanuel Goldstein.

>>34893 To be honest I'm a bit disappointed. You have all these resources at your disposal to actually *learn* about the way capitalism profits from oppressions of all kind, but you choose instead to mock and perpetuate some kind of connection (whatever it is) between leftist political theory and international Jewry.

>>34897 Not the guy you are responding to but this is a general question. >Is the problem the internet, or is it the people who control it? Would the internet be a negative influence on us even if the people who ran the internet monopolies had our best interests at heart. Would the internet still be bad even without ads and social media and addiction algorithms? Also both capitalism and marxist communism operate on the same materialistic foundation. Material satisfaction does contribute to happiness, but it is definitely not the only factor. Read about Diogenes.

>>34915 I would say that the capitalist monopolies controlling the internet are a big part of the problem. If we went back to a pre-2.0, truly decentralized internet, you would still have your racist, fascist weirdos huddled in their own corner (e.g. Stormfront), but without attention- and therefore profit-driven platforms like the big social media conglomerates of today, they would find it much harder to amplify and normalise their ideas.

>>31810 who are the internet green feeders in your opinion?

>>34915 That doesn't mean that material satisfaction has to oppose intellectual and spiritual satisfactions. And you do need material satisfaction to pursue further.

>>31398 >>32994 Just look at Japanese websites since they still are compatible with flip-phones and look like yahoo geocities. The good old days, will it ever come again? Maybe after the great collapse? >>33041 There's as much loophole in data collection 'laws' as tax loopholes.

>>31829 Well, the purpose of the internet would be to convey information, which it obviously doesn't fail at. Just like guns kill people, regardless of intention, a gun killing someone equates to using the gun for its purpose - this would then be good by your standards. But the problem is, rather than the tool, the thing that we are creating/transmuting and our method/intention. I can't believe the solution people throw around here is 'ok, so we just turn off the internet and go back and hunt mammoth'. Are the users here feds or 16 year olds? Quite frankly, I think we are presented with an opportunity to change the course of human history for the better or worse, and I really think taking drastic action is required - but in the right space. I think we can and need to get rid of the mass of humanity and I think the utmost imperative of humanity is to begin to self-select and breed a new class of human. The problem is never, ever, ever the tool. Humanity goes in cycles, and the problem is always something like greed or retardation, and if you are paying enough attention, it always seems to come from the same type of person out of the same circumstances. It would really be a tragedy to stop internet transmission.

>>31393 No one has time to submit their personal info while jacking

>>31381 I gave up porn like 3 years ago, hentai too, because all the rapist soykaf, i still masturbate tho, but recently tried not, but i just watch cam4

>>31376 >This isn't something I've had a lot of time to think about, so I'd like to hear lains thoughts. I wonder if OP still checks this post from August. My thoughts are, Most of what you describe post-2000 are a function of the web browser becoming the dominant application of the internet. pre-2000 there was email, nntp, irc, bbs, etc. There wasn't much commerce, because there wasn't much encryption and everything was mostly decentralized. Then along comes the web browser and SSL, and suddenly, there are commercials about the internet cash cow on the tele. The client-server model of http is inherently centralized. The browser is the thin client and all the real hardware and information lives on the server. You create accounts, you are monitored, you are a renter. You don't own your piece of the internet anymore. Innovation mostly stopped at web browsers. Instead, all the money and manpower went into web servers to sell you something. People who can write software and build new internet applications are busy working on web servers instead, because they need to eat and pay rent. The stopped imagining new decentralized solutions, because the centralized one takes the lion's share of the profits.

>>31376 Right now the internet mostly exists to create desires that people can only satisfy with other, stronger desires, which can only be satisfied with..

>>31393 >that porn sites have no age verification They used to. Somewhere along the 2010s, they removed age verification from porn sites.

>>32141 Some classic loose logic conspiracy trash. Do you think that there were Cambodians on computers using ARPANET? If it was used at all in Vietnam it was used by glowies to communicate with other glowies. Not to spy on vietcong rice farmers USING ARPANET in 1970. Its a protocol to send and receive information as electric signals like the telephone before it and the telegraph before that. People like you, not the protocol, are the problem. Double digit IQ midwits who think they have found the "Truth" and go around proselytizing. If your not going put in the effort, or don't have the capability to reason then you should find another hobby

>>39665 >Double digit IQ midwits By definition, 100 is the median IQ. A "midwit" would in fact have triple digits.

>>39671 america's average is double digits. It depends where u live.

>>39671 It was a mistake to personally attack. Low effort conspiracy is a virus that infects everyone that comes in contact. It drains others will to action and it instills apathetic passive thoughts in most. It makes me angry when when people casually throw this stuff out into the world and force others to decipher it. Everyone who reads it has to waste their will doing work you should have done before posting. If one wants to be important, which I believe is a driving force behind those who originate and perpetuate conspiracy, its more beneficial to promote positive interactions between humans rather than spread information about possible negative actions of others. Always choose the more active path.

>>39700 Not saying that person's theory is correct at all, but there's nothing wrong with theorizing about conspiracies. It's more dangerous to fool yourself into believing you live in a world where conspiracies don't happen.

>>31911 Capitalism is not the problem, neo-liberalism is. Capitalism is the best we've got, communist is soykaf and I've heard about distributism but I need to read more about it (I think it's a derivative of capitalism anywho). I recently saw an arte documentary highlighting different companies which shielded themselves from the current neo-liberalism, sharholder crap etc... Ecosia is one of them, the CEO is just an employee among other with his specific task to lead the company, I think it goes something like the company owns itself and thus will never seek to grow or make profit at all costs, it will always strive to achieve its mission (planting trees when it comes to ecosia). Back to the topic, internet went bad the moment there was a monetary incentive through advertisement and people abused it, data collection is simply the next step, ethical or not doesn't matter for these people. Neo-liberalists only believe in profits and economical growth at all costs. They would gladly destroy democracy and even the capitalist system itself if it means more short term gainz. The only ways to stop it is either governments stepping up and restrict the freedom of those bad players (probably not going to happen because of lobbying) or people waking up from their consumerism dream and start voting with their penny and boycotting. It's for a good reason that you're facing legal action when calling for boycot on mainstream medias, they are dead scared of that. And internet is a wonderful tool and a scary weapon at the same time, it's up to us to do something awesome with it, as long as you can use tor, decentralized networks and services, etc.. nothing is lost. If people around the world can somehow come together and change things for the better it'll be through internet. If there are two things to remember from Mandela, it's that nothing comes easy especially not freedom and that education is key in changing the world. The neo-liberalists managed to make the internet, more specifically the web and actualll only the clear web, their playground. It's up to us to take it back and show them that they are not welcome. Never give up Lain, educate your family, educate your friends, boycott all the evil corps at all costs all those soykafty services that is like kicking dead whales down the beach your data and feed the algo, use rss, use gemini, use tor, use i2p, use bittorrent, use peertube, use email, use pgp, create your business and give it a sustainable mission, don't seek short term gainz, open your eyes and look around, there is so much more things we can still do without playing into their game. I really have a dark view of the world, I think it's a mess, but if there is one thing I will never give up it's hope.

>>31911 >>40190 capitalism is a hoax. all countries and companies are tentacles of the same monster. they follow the same narratives because they follow the same higher ups. they all get instructions from the same source. money is printed paper trash backed solely by delusion. it was never about the money, that's just their excuse.

>>40190 >They would gladly destroy democracy Hard to destroy something which never existed in the first place. Elections are not democracy.

>>40195 So you think your local baker, farmer, hairdresser, dentist, ebenist are part of that monster too? Capitalism is also not just about the money, the three main components are capital, labor and land, we often forget that. You probably live in a city no? >>40203 I don't think democracy = electing the executive power. I am the citizen of a federated country which allow me to vote for every single federal, cantonal and communal law that is about to pass every few months. I am also able to launch referendums and initiatives given enough signatures if I am not happy with something and believe more people think like me. I also elect the cantonal representative and federal representative every few years. The system is still rotten from the inside I agree, politicians literally are brain-dead people, but there are still ways to improve it and act upon it. Maybe if your country just have elections a start could be to educate you peers that this is not democracy? Or if you don't have any attachement to it you should maybe move to one that is more suited in that regards, and then work to get integrated and help the community there with your skills? And as I said before boycott is a fairly democratic power imo. It's up to the people to buy things or not (I am speaking about the west, don't know about dictatorship). The best thing you can do is to educate people around you and teach them to recognize progaganda and such, or learn about it and do counter-propaganda yourself if you think your view of the world is better. I would advise the former tho.

>>40190 >I recently saw an arte documentary highlighting different companies which shielded themselves from the current neo-liberalism, sharholder crap etc... Ecosia is one of them, the CEO is just an employee among other with his specific task to lead the company, I think it goes something like the company owns itself and thus will never seek to grow or make profit at all costs This is basically the co-op model and the modern forms of it can trace its roots back to socialism and is one of the potential theorised forms of worker ownership of the means of production which defines socialism. The core of socialism is worker ownership and the core of capitalism is private ownership which means that in general co-op style businesses are arguably more socialist than they are capitalist. Theres even offshoots of socialism such as Market socialism where the idea is that you still hold onto the market economy we see as closely linked to capitalism but all of the corporations are either co-ops or publicly owned so they can achieve what is best for society rather than what is best for the shareholders while still using the purported efficiency of the market. This particular strain of thought may be something you wish to research as it seems like it would fit your beliefs like a glove.

>>40207 Wow, you just happen to be the one Swiss on lainchan? While it is true that you have considerable popular referenda, direct decision-making is only one half of democracy. Of course you can't have everyone making all the decisions all the time. Electing representatives to make some of those decisions is the oligarchic way. Appointing representatives by lot is the democratic way. As Aristotle wrote, according to the people who actually invented democracy, "...that it is thought to be democratic for the offices to be assigned by lot, for them to be elected oligarchic..." Switzerland still does have elections, so it is an oligarchy regardless of the level of inequality.

>>40207 if you live in a garbage dump you end up covered in filth too. i hate my "contributions" to this evil society and hate participating in it but they've made the whole world a garbage dump so for now there's no way to completely avoid feeding the monster. people used to grow their own food. now though the controllers stole the land so people need to participate in this cancerous society in order to eat.

>>34733 The only things that bothers me is that he explains it through memes... I mean memes are useless but they are not the inhibitor of the decadence. Besides that the moral is pretty much correct, like >>32161 Pointed out, he is totally right, internet should be a tool to get things done, and never in any single case overtake reality. Don't let the wired suck you in. Don't love Lain, let her love you.

>>40209 Thanks for explaining me this idea of Market socialism and co-op model, gonna do some more research on that. Also I believe there was a misunderstanding in our definitions, I learned to never oppose capitalism and socialism as it is unfair. I apologize for being highly reductionist but here are my definitions, feel free to read more on it or help me understand if you think I am wrong. >Capitalism = businesses privately owned >Marxism = businesses owned by the workers >Communism = perversion of marxism by an elite to rule to workers >Socialism = defend the weak for a healthier society and thus more hapiness >Liberalism = defend individual freedoms for a healthier society and be more happy >Neo-liberalism = cancer of society, perversion of liberalism, just care about economic freedom and profit that is believed will lead to happiness Based on that I am convinced the culprit is not capitalism, everybody seems to think capitalism is the problem but the only fault capitalism has, is that it's possible to pervert it with neo-liberalism. Actually writing this I realize that capitalism has a somewhat similar problem than the internet, a certain group of people perverting a tool that could be used for progress and improving society. Like >>35617 Said, greed or retardation awaits around the corner to ruin it all. So I can't stress this enough, education is key, and the internet is a wonderful too for that if used correctly. >>40211 Citing ancient greek philosophers, you're my hero. I often try to find wisdom through them when I am lost or try to seek answers to life's problems. Very enlightening, do you mind explaining what it actually means to appoint representative by lot? Maybe comparing it to elections. >>40269 You can still get a garden and grow food, nothing prevents you to do that. Lots of resources on the internet or books to learn about that. Gathering wild and edible plant is a thing too. The world is trash, I agree but there are still people like you and me, it's always up to us to make a difference, however small the difference. Look at whatsapp, they are soykafting their pants because everybody is leaving their service. Never give up hope lainon.

>>40340 Think of it like randomized jury duty, sortition for other offices is the same principle. In fact jury duty itself descends directly from the same Athenian system. The Athenians used randomization devices called kleroteria with rows of slits for each citizen to place a slip in and then a collection of colored marbles in a tube would be used to select a random subset for a group of officials.

>>40207 No, the local farmer and shopkeeper are not part of the problem. The problem is BIG businesses. >"Money had no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." -Napoleon Your local farmer is PART of your community, and has just as much interest in seeing it succeed as you do. The CEO of Walmart isn't part of your community, and would love to see it destroyed if it meant he could pay you a lower wage. The reason the internet is in decay is because its users are exploited by psychologically addictive algorithms, FOMO, etc. that companies spend billions to develop. As for your idea of educating your peers... theres a reason the west is in decline. Its the myth of the "educated voter." Very few people are capable leaders and statesmen. 99% of people you talk to don't know how many planets are in the solar system. Not all people are capable of contributing to the political process. Thats why we have a >media controlled state because people are generally easy to manipulate. And who is manipulating the people? The people with the money!

>>31376 Yes, who doesn't? I hate to sound like an old man but it's frankly fuarrrking pathetic that most businesses will gladly put their important records on a server across the ocean. Ignoring obvious privacy concerns, what happens if XzX-Pu55yR1pp3r-XzX attacks your database? We've already seen this soykaf with WannaCry and yet nobody gave a damn a few weeks afterward.

>>31820 Times have changed eh? Back in the day IRC was the soykaf, now there's fancy soykaf like Discord...I wonder what its gonna look like in 20 years

>>40505 IRC is still the best way to chat. Remember when you could still host your own servers on major pc games like Unreal? I don't even wanna think about what things are going to look like in 20 years..

>>40515 >IRC is still the best way to chat While IRC is a very minimal way of chatting, I would hardly call it the best: it isn't federated and doesn't have image support nor chat history, and the only encryption is server-side (SSL/TLS), with no end-to-end encryption support that I know of (correct me if I'm wrong). The "best" instant messaging service in my opinion would be an end-to-end encrypted peer-to-peer one like GNU Jami, Tox, or Briar. If peer-to-peer isn't for you (messages can't be sent if both x and y aren't online), then I would recommend XMPP or Matrix, with XMPP currently being slightly superior though I think that Matrix will eventually overcome XMPP as it is far more organized; both protocols support end-to-end encryption nonetheless.

>>40520 >correct me if I'm wrong You can use OTR to encrypt IRC messages, but not in multi party channels so you're mostly right >Jami I really like it on paper and used it with my brother for a bit, but I hate the client software. I understand that everyone wants to make their chat software look like skype in the vain hope that normal people will suddenly care about decentralized encrypted chat protocols, but for me it really ruins the whole experience to have to use a bloated buggy mess that can't really be integrated with the rest of my system.

>>40523 I'm using qTox and convincing my friends to use it too. My computer is too slow to run web discord on the background so eventually all of them will have to migrate if they wanna talk to me.

>>40520 IRC is federated, kinda. I've been thinking of setting up an XMPP server for me and my buds to use.

A few thoughts to fix the internet: 1. Break up tech monopolies with anti-trust laws 2. Social media must be federated. Corporate social media derezzed. 3. Bandwidth limit to prevent even more bloat. You don't need 100gbps. You really want Quora and cookingchannel.com to load 43Gb sites? 4. Ban the use of targeted algorithms to stop addiction and echo chambers. You want Coca cola to be able to stream your thoughts into an algorithm via your Apple neuron-implant? 5. Decency laws to ban porn ads and make all porn sites pay-walled. Protect the children from seeing it, and make adults more conscious about consuming it. This one is probably gonna be contentious but I believe it would be a good thing. 6. Children under the age of 16 shouldn't be allowed to own or operate an internet connected device outside of school or library. They would still have phones and computers, just not internet access at home. Think of how this might benefit kids and how it would hurt them. Schoolwork could still be done and just turned it by uploading it at school. Computer literacy would probably increase since there would be no youtube or instagram for kids to get addicted to. I know that if this were the case my childhood would have been much more eventful. This would also kill "the cloud" which takes away the users rights. Getting people accustomed to owning their data and having control over their computing would be a great thing to bring people up in. Think of how chromebooks and ipads have changed the way gen-alphas view computers.

>nooo the internet is not bad, it's how you use it >"Guns don't kill people, people kill people"? that's a fuarrrking dumb argument So which one is it?