[jstalin]

Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before, any information is at our fingertips, anyone who wants to create a web site is free to do so and post whatever they want (except maybe in China), commerce is available to the individual on a global basis, etc etc.

Whining about the "good ole days" when .000001% of the population had even heard of the internet and it was reserved, at great cost, to academics and researchers, is just pathetic.

[coldtea]

>Wow, what's with all the frowns and sad faces? The Internet is perhaps the most incredible invention of humanity ever. Billions of people are connected to each other like never before

And why is that a good thing in itself? Easy access to anybody else?

Ever stopped to think what kind of other side-effects that ability could have?

[mseebach]

I can come up with a number of reasons it would be bad, but none that doesn't make me sound like a rabid totalitarian.

[coldtea]

Actually if you were a rabid totalitarian, easy access to everyone would be the greatest gift you could ask for. Especially working towards building some large empire...

[seiji]

Billions of people are connected to each other like never before

All controlled by about 5 corporations at the top.

[marvin]

This is hyperbole. Yes, there is a small number of large corporations which have a lot of users. But the infrastructure of the Internet is still there, and is largely as unregulated as it ever was. It's just that it has become less visible in the enormous mass of people who use the internet in a "simpler" way.

[sneak]

Did anyone ever really think it would be any different?

At least we're still allowed to rent servers without a license, and make our own webpages.

[thisiswrong]

>Did anyone ever really think it would be any different?

Er, Yes! I'd say no one back then would have ever wanted the internet to be as privatized, militarized, and censored as it is now.

We need to take the internet back into the hands of the people by adopting mesh networks. This is how the internet needs to become... and fast :

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/02/24/activists-creatin...

With the rise of cryptocurrencies there is huge potential to make mesh networking catch on around the globe :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300911.0

Non-technical users can already easily set up mesh networks using smartphone apps : http://opengarden.com/

[mseebach]

> Er, Yes! I'd say no one back then would have ever wanted the internet to be as privatized, militarized, and censored as it is now.

Erm. The Internet is an explicitly military invention and without it's (controversial) privatisation, you'd be unlikely to have heard of it. It's not meaningfully censored outside of jurisdictions that already censors all other media extensively (DNS-poisoning consumer lines is bad and broken but really very low on the censorship-scale).

[anoncow]

To think that they can take away my "right" to make web pages is frightening.

[mseebach]

"They" can't. Stop the scare-mongering. If you're not a good terms with your local government, you have dozens of alternative jurisdictions to select from. Even if you can't find a single friendly government to setup under, The Silk Road stayed up for over two years. China isn't even pretending they're not censoring the Internet, and their well-funded censorship agency still has to play whack-a-mole with VPNs.