Timely article about how awful it is online

For me the Internet is an endless supply of information, entertainment and stimulation. It has almost no limit and seems to go endlessly and every possible direction. It holds much more good than bad.
To go on and on about the evils of the Internet is kind of silly, because it’s up to you what you consume there. It doesn’t care, nor should it. And I like it that way, including Facebook and Twitter.

Welcome to BoingBoing!

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Man, it still feels like September in here, even a few weeks later, eh @gracchus?

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Mr. Clavin?

(<rofl> I wanted Dorothy, but found this instead)

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As a diehard Firefoxer, I love me this addon, bigly.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tranquility-1/

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This to a few powers of ten. Not using either twitter or facebook is positively therapeutic.

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I, I… don’t have a comeback, because I don’t know the Clavin reference.

Edited: That’s what you call your drunken retort, there Normy.

The funny thing is Cliff Stoll visits Boing Boing every so often.

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Years ago, I was vaguely pondering writing a book about the SSK Strong Programme. The title I planned to use would also work for a history of the internet.

“Pissing in the Fountain of Knowledge”

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I agree, but I also believe it could have been much more. It could have been a medium as transformative as the written word or the classroom. Instead it’s been co-opted by a combination of greedy commodification and a tragedy of the commons that people turn to corporations for the solution to. We’ve reached a point where a handful of big businesses increasingly dictate the policy of what was supposed to be a public good. So I do understand why a lot of the old-timers who built the underpinnings of the net and the web are bitter about the squandered potential. In fact, I’m surprised they are more bitter, but I guess the fact that a lot of them got wealthy or were treated as doyens by the young Turks probably softens the disappointment that their dream of a modern Platonic Academy has been turned into a cesspool with shopping kiosks.

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it’s the next corner turn of sophistication for capitalism that’s the unknown known that makes some context the burning cauldron that should follow meaningfully :slight_smile:

image

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I guess they left all the typos in there for 22 years just to make the internet look even worse.

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I love me some Internet. I avoid Facebook as much as possible (I have an account I rarely), but Twitter is one of my go-to sites. It’s not awful, it just needs to be curated.

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