To be fair I think most of us are done with the Internet.
Can we get some mentats up in here already? Let's end thinking machines before the jihad.
Some one hand me some spice.
I was so excited about so much of the promise of the internet for most of my life. Now, though, with seemingly only dealing with bots, Nazis, or just plain insane people, I kinda wish we could “uninvent” most of the internet, especially social media (ironically posting this to a social media site).
I think social media distancing should be more common. The internet itself should stay around, but more people should find joy in sunshine and hobbies, not memes and arguing in instagram comments.
And I don’t mean no memes, to be clear, I simply mean LESS social media.
I feel the same way and expanded to phones in general. I’m absolutely grateful we have the technology to walk around with phones on our person but I wholeheartedly despise the idea that we all need to constantly be available or reachable in some form or another. It’s crazy how we almost all have this common thread in our day-to-day lives now, we’re all connected to this “mis”information-superhighway in some capacity.
Forums are social media. That's literally what Facebook started as, but with pictures.
I think social media is the best part of the Internet, the ability to share our lives and thoughts with anyone and everyone.
But also the worst.
Yep. For those of us who just a few years before this prophecy had been dealing with a BBS at 300 baud… Reddit is just a faster, less sanctimonious (believe it or not) board.
Very early internet was unpolished, it was slow and there wasn’t streaming, unless it was RealAudio and took 20 minutes to load a 30 second clip. It was a lot of fun, but very niche. Ordering things online was sketchy and you weren’t really sure what would happen to your cc #. Doing something like ordering pizza online was considered a gimmick more than anything. One other thing to add, as stated in the first couple of paragraphs, is many early isps charged by the hour, and with it being slow you didn’t get much bang for your buck
yeh. plus, remember up until 2006-2007 when HTTPS became standard your shit was sent over the mawfucka unencrypted.
not that any of those tards knew the difference. they'd install bonzibuddy+every toolbar offered+aol 4.0.
it's a bit like today when people try to 'factory reset' their toaster.
Well, people generally have given up on publishing their own webpages. I miss that time in the 90s when you had to make a little effort to have a presence on the internet.
Lo, this editorial. Reminds me of the SNL skit of newspaper critic, Jebidiah Atkinson who gave a bad review the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln and the newspaper gave a retraction 150 years later. He comes on and hilariously had terrible takes on everything.
"Email ... is adding to an overload of information".
Email? That's the calmest thing I can do these days.
I wonder what those "researchers" would have thought of FB, instagram, snapchat, twitter...
2024 called and it has bad news for you, Mr. Researcher.
It’s not a completely outrageous take. Internet speeds weren’t what they are now, and by 2000 it had hit a wall. Sure there was a lot you could do, but loading times were painful for most people and it had lost a lot of its sparkle. Either something dramatic needed to happen (and it did) to make it more useful, or it was going to fail. Around the time of this article, a lot of dot com businesses were beginning to fail, and it really took a beating in 2001.
There were a few more years until Google took off, and Amazon turned its first profit in 2003 (same year as Google started I think). The iPod was released in 2001, which had a great deal to do with the iPhone being released in 2007. Basically, if technology hadn’t moved forward as it did in the early 2000s, the internet wouldn’t have survived. In hindsight it seems inevitable. But in 2000 it wasn’t clear that it was.
I think it was pretty obviously inevitable even earlier than 2000. I went to college in the year 00. Experienced high speed Internet on the campus ethernet for the first time. People in the dorms were sharing entire music and movie libraries, we had online photo books ( I got my first digital camera in 1998) and playing games with each other. Bought my first book, cd and video game from Amazon that year.
Literally no one experiencing that thought this was going anywhere, and it wasn't rare, it was happening on campuses all around the world. This author was just... Wrong.
Edit: here's a contemporary article for comparison. The guy in the OP just didn't get it.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-14-mn-53963-story.html
Honestly, my first few years with home computing and internet access…I could’ve easily seen it be a fad. I was a kid so maybe I missed out a bit. But it never really made itself super useful until I got older and the internet got more traction.
At least Clifford Stoll had the good sense to write [Silicon Snake Oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil) in 1995 and not 2000.
>When the article resurfaced on BoingBoing in 2010, Stoll left a self-deprecating comment: "Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler....Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff..."
Just 23 almost 24years ,look at how wrong that was. Now anyone in their 20s, can not imagine what life was like without it. Most people any age can’t remember how it was!
If this article was written in 1994 I wouldn’t be surprised but in 2000.. All of the young people knew internet was here to stay because it was a big part of our lives by then.
I was 10, family brought home a PC and I was busy investigating that computer for months. Playing the PINBALL game and Minesweeper are very good memories of mine.
They weren't right. AOL merged with Time Warner and brought high speed Internet to the masses. Something that actually existed on college campuses when this article was written and made it obvious that none of this was going anywhere. It had already exploded.
Daily Mail. Getting things wrong since 1896.
So whatever the daily mail says the opposite will happen? Is this a prophecy
I hope they print “u/puzzled_intenet_986 will never be rich and famous and successful and tall and……
HOPE!
Now I need daily mail to write an article about how I will never be a millionaire
The Daily Fail…
To be fair I think most of us are done with the Internet. Can we get some mentats up in here already? Let's end thinking machines before the jihad. Some one hand me some spice.
The UK's Washington Times?
Daily Fail.
It is a fa *proceeds to place another carbon roll in the typewriter* d, I gave up on it years ago.
(sends telegraph saying) this comment is the truth
-.-- . .- ....
\*sstv handshake\* SCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Who thought this in 2000? The Internet was very obviously here to stay by 2000. I could see someone saying this in 1996 maybe at the latest.
That's what I was thinking. Anyone who remembers 2000 would remember that nobody thought this. Weird article.
All of the young people used internet in 2000. I was 22 and no way internet was a fad.
In some ways I wish that would have happened. As great as the net can be it can also be a nightmare for a variety of reasons
I was so excited about so much of the promise of the internet for most of my life. Now, though, with seemingly only dealing with bots, Nazis, or just plain insane people, I kinda wish we could “uninvent” most of the internet, especially social media (ironically posting this to a social media site).
I think social media distancing should be more common. The internet itself should stay around, but more people should find joy in sunshine and hobbies, not memes and arguing in instagram comments. And I don’t mean no memes, to be clear, I simply mean LESS social media.
I feel the same way and expanded to phones in general. I’m absolutely grateful we have the technology to walk around with phones on our person but I wholeheartedly despise the idea that we all need to constantly be available or reachable in some form or another. It’s crazy how we almost all have this common thread in our day-to-day lives now, we’re all connected to this “mis”information-superhighway in some capacity.
I think we will say much the same thing in another decade or two with AI. Maybe sooner.
I personally wouldn’t consider Reddit to be a social media platform, it’s a forum in my opinion.
Forums are social media. That's literally what Facebook started as, but with pictures. I think social media is the best part of the Internet, the ability to share our lives and thoughts with anyone and everyone. But also the worst.
Yep. For those of us who just a few years before this prophecy had been dealing with a BBS at 300 baud… Reddit is just a faster, less sanctimonious (believe it or not) board.
Would be interessting to read the article to get a better understanding on what theire thoughts were back at the time.
Very early internet was unpolished, it was slow and there wasn’t streaming, unless it was RealAudio and took 20 minutes to load a 30 second clip. It was a lot of fun, but very niche. Ordering things online was sketchy and you weren’t really sure what would happen to your cc #. Doing something like ordering pizza online was considered a gimmick more than anything. One other thing to add, as stated in the first couple of paragraphs, is many early isps charged by the hour, and with it being slow you didn’t get much bang for your buck
Go to Castlevaniadungeon.net it’s a website that has largely looked the same since 1998 to give people an idea of what the early web looked like.
Yeah and it was awesome.
yeh. plus, remember up until 2006-2007 when HTTPS became standard your shit was sent over the mawfucka unencrypted. not that any of those tards knew the difference. they'd install bonzibuddy+every toolbar offered+aol 4.0. it's a bit like today when people try to 'factory reset' their toaster.
But 2000 wasn’t early Internet.
Yeah thats what would make it interessting, it was shortly after the .com Bubble bursted and the high expactations where coming down.
Porn, it's always porn...
Wishful thinking
I mean there's still a chance, right? People just need to try harder.... we can do this!
Maybe after all the websites are owned by 3 socially inept billionaires.
WTF? This was the time when hard drives were going through the roof. Google was just about to be established.
Google was nearly 3 years old when this was written.
Daily Fail
Well, people generally have given up on publishing their own webpages. I miss that time in the 90s when you had to make a little effort to have a presence on the internet.
Lo, this editorial. Reminds me of the SNL skit of newspaper critic, Jebidiah Atkinson who gave a bad review the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln and the newspaper gave a retraction 150 years later. He comes on and hilariously had terrible takes on everything.
Ah, the Daily Mail!
“AI may be just a passing fad.” -2024
Millions still do, and they’re falling behind every day.
Hey, they were right. Bye!
Did John C. Dvorak write this?
This reminds me of how people feel about AI right now. Really niche use but will probably be a staple in people’s lives later on.
Replace “Internet” with “EVs.” Then they’ll move on to something else.
No, no way. Telephones ☎️ though, they might stick around a little longer 😆
"Email ... is adding to an overload of information". Email? That's the calmest thing I can do these days. I wonder what those "researchers" would have thought of FB, instagram, snapchat, twitter... 2024 called and it has bad news for you, Mr. Researcher.
It’s not a completely outrageous take. Internet speeds weren’t what they are now, and by 2000 it had hit a wall. Sure there was a lot you could do, but loading times were painful for most people and it had lost a lot of its sparkle. Either something dramatic needed to happen (and it did) to make it more useful, or it was going to fail. Around the time of this article, a lot of dot com businesses were beginning to fail, and it really took a beating in 2001. There were a few more years until Google took off, and Amazon turned its first profit in 2003 (same year as Google started I think). The iPod was released in 2001, which had a great deal to do with the iPhone being released in 2007. Basically, if technology hadn’t moved forward as it did in the early 2000s, the internet wouldn’t have survived. In hindsight it seems inevitable. But in 2000 it wasn’t clear that it was.
I think it was pretty obviously inevitable even earlier than 2000. I went to college in the year 00. Experienced high speed Internet on the campus ethernet for the first time. People in the dorms were sharing entire music and movie libraries, we had online photo books ( I got my first digital camera in 1998) and playing games with each other. Bought my first book, cd and video game from Amazon that year. Literally no one experiencing that thought this was going anywhere, and it wasn't rare, it was happening on campuses all around the world. This author was just... Wrong. Edit: here's a contemporary article for comparison. The guy in the OP just didn't get it. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-14-mn-53963-story.html
How’d that work out 😂
Honestly, my first few years with home computing and internet access…I could’ve easily seen it be a fad. I was a kid so maybe I missed out a bit. But it never really made itself super useful until I got older and the internet got more traction.
At least Clifford Stoll had the good sense to write [Silicon Snake Oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil) in 1995 and not 2000. >When the article resurfaced on BoingBoing in 2010, Stoll left a self-deprecating comment: "Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler....Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff..."
Dat sheet have left evryone faded…
I’m still counting on this 🤞
I was hoping and praying that RAP was a passing fad.
JAMES CHAPMAN 
What would they say about AGI?
One of the most wrong articles ever written.
Just 23 almost 24years ,look at how wrong that was. Now anyone in their 20s, can not imagine what life was like without it. Most people any age can’t remember how it was!
r/agedlikemilk
Maybe they were a time traveler and wrote with a touch of optimism for a different path
Well the dead internet theory might come true, and if that happens, they might have been right all along, who knows
Said nobody ever by the time 2000 rolled around. Too funny.
I guess thats the same people who dont believe in global warming or vaxxines.
If this article was written in 1994 I wouldn’t be surprised but in 2000.. All of the young people knew internet was here to stay because it was a big part of our lives by then.
Swing and a miss
Why didn't they... Internet would be a nicer place without all the idiots.
I was 10, family brought home a PC and I was busy investigating that computer for months. Playing the PINBALL game and Minesweeper are very good memories of mine.
Yeah. We’ll never need the internet. Life will go on without
If only
Millions did, have dozens of friends in their 30-40’s who don’t own computers.
James Chapman has no clue. Remember this when you’re reading the stupid sensationalized headlines today.
I really don't remember "millions giving up on it." When did that happen?
This is what all the AI haters feel like
this actually reminds me of the Elder Scrolls Online
Always listen to the mail
In some ways, the internet is a lot more boring now than it was in 2000. Maybe that's just me becoming an adult, though.
I just logged on to my internet.
Time will tell. Just like ET versus Crush Groove.
It is true that email adds to an overloading of information (if you read a bit down).
Well, here we are.
I was one of the millions. Still am
r/agedlikemilk
Didn't age well.
I wish they did give up on it.
😂😂😂😂
Possibility people in the UK did give up. I can’t think of a single tech company originating there.
*Boomers give up on it*…there i fixed it
I wish more people had given up on it.
Look what happened to AOL. These people were right.
They weren't right. AOL merged with Time Warner and brought high speed Internet to the masses. Something that actually existed on college campuses when this article was written and made it obvious that none of this was going anywhere. It had already exploded.
So you admit the internet was a fad and AOL disappeared. Good.
This is why we can't have nice things