[majormajor]

I strongly prefer the web of today to the web of ten years ago because those barriers to entry prevented most people from doing all the cool stuff Anil talks about. So it was possible to have all those better connections, but it didn't happen much.

One way or another, services would've arised that would've tied it all together for the non-technical. I don't think we lost anything more than a potential to have a "better web" that never would've been realized anyway. (And many of those things are still possible, just even less worth the effort now that there are entrenched networks.)

[shiftpgdn]

I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today.

In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.

[groby_b]

Oh, how soon they forget. Remember geocities?

And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher...

It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.

[smacktoward]

Yeah, when the 2000 Web was flourishing, all you heard about from the neckbeards was how the same people had killed Usenet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

To a certain degree every generation thinks the Net it grew up with is the Real Net, and the Net that came afterwards is a wasteland.

[brigade]

Are you arguing that the Eternal September effect doesn't exist? Because having been seen the effect first hand in no less than a dozen different online communities over the years, I can confidently say that it very much does exist.

But this is in regards to specific sites and communities; "The Net" has long since become too large to be considered a single community.

[majormajor]

Yeah, my experiences on the late-90s, early-2000s internet don't support the idea that some level of technical aptitude correlates to a desire to share anything other than drivel.

Timecube, dancing babies, blink/marquee tags, MIDI music backgrounds on yet another "hey look at these pictures of the new muffler I put on my car!" site... ah, the good ol' days.

I honestly haven't noticed any increase in drivel, as a proportion of overall content, on the web now compared to when I first got on in 1998.

[stcredzero]

> I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today.

The takeaway: If the Network Effects aren't harnessed for the cause of freedom and cool, beautiful stuff, then someone else will harness them to make money off of drivel.

[kamjam]

And at the same time it allows someone in the middle of a war torn country to take a picture with their mobile phone and instantly upload it to the world.

You are essentially talking of the same kind of barriers of entry that Anil complains about the Facebook et al put up around data exchange.

[IheartApplesDix]

That's all part of bringing the rest humanity up to speed. At least now we don't have to do it face to face with people we'd rather not see (or rather, smell). Every time you see something stupid on the web, you should realize that is a place where education and other social institutions failed.