| The wild thing is that the web has achieved both the aspirations and the failings mentioned here. There's an odd dichotomy of user experiences. Progress really has accelerated. "Big data" couldn't have been a thing without the Internet. Science through improved communication is advancing more rapidly than ever before. Just look at how quickly things change today vs. 100 years ago in all aspects of life. Knowledge is everywhere, you just need to know where to dig to work around all of the junk. You no longer need to take up an apprenticeship to understand the basics of a given job, and knowledge as a whole is more accessible than ever before. We really can communicate with people all over the world. The Internet is always active, because users from across the globe are always online. The Internet has accelerated globalism. People can readily expose themselves to outside ideas and perspectives, so long as they take the effort to step outside of their algorithm-prescribed interest bubbles every once in a while. You can make friends on the other side of the planet and communicate far easier than you could ever send letters or pay for long-distance phone calls. People still make their own websites. I'm sure there are more of them then there ever were in the '90s, they're just significantly harder to surface in the deluge of the modern Internet. Ads, pop-ups, and modals are only experienced by people that don't know about worthwhile ad/nuisance blockers. Ultimately, the Internet is filled with more content rather than strictly better content than ever before. Though as a consequence of more, it means there's also more great knowledge and more likeminded subcultures available than ever before, but you need a certain kind of discipline to actively work to find it. This is why I feel that information literacy is one of the most important life skills: if you can find the "good stuff", discriminate fact from fiction, and dig deeper than an AI-generated Google summary of search results, then you have the means to learn and develop talents in just about anything. |