[overfeed]

> In either domain, you can select where you want to go and what you want to do.

In both cases, there was a time when both were exclusively people-powered and "the man" was entirely absent.

"There are some authentic nuggets if you know where to go" are the last kicks of a fast-gentrifying neighborhood, to use mixed metaphors. In the past anywhere/everywhere you could go was authentic.

[wrs]

The Internet was originally funded by "the man" (DARPA) so this isn't entirely accurate.

[wkat4242]

Yes but the internet wasn't really where digital counterculture started. That was the BBSes. Until the early 90s only some universities had access to the internet and very few of them outside the US.

When the internet became a public thing the counterculture quickly moved there.

[iwontberude]

Dark Tangent is/was a fed so it’s true of DEFCON too

[overfeed]

DARPA funds all kinds of things without being involved / having a military or government presence in the thing - a contemporary example would be DARPA kick-starting self-driving vehicles.

IMO, the web was authentically p2p before online Paypal, banner ads and Bonzi Buddy. It's still possible to subscribe to blogs (said nuggets) via RSS - which is miraculously having a renaissance - but it's all going to be drowned out by the relentless, unfeeling firehouse of AI slop.

[wrs]

OK, but that seems like a funny definition of "military presence", since DARPA is the military.

The goal DARPA was trying to accelerate by funding self-driving, btw, was to "achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that ... by 2015, one third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned". [0]

[0] https://www.grandchallenge.org/grandchallenge/docs/Grand_Cha...

[overfeed]

It appears we e have different thresholds on what counts as "military presence".

By way of explanation: rocketry was funded and developed for military ends, including von Braun's earlier work on the V2 and later work on missiles across the Atlantic and the development of ICBMs. IMO, there's no military presence in human spaceflight[1], but you may see it differently due to the heritage of the propulsion system.

[zevon]

I'm curious to lern when this phase of absence of the man and its entities - like publicly funded agencies and labs and suchlike - from the internet happened and how?