I enjoyed the first years of the Internet as well, but as fun and exciting the early web, IRC ad Usenet forums were, there was no Google Maps, no Wikipedia, no next-day shipping of almost everything, no Youtube... many things I could live without today as I did at the time, but overall I think they have a decent utility.

What the Internet has lost in terms of mystique and pioneering freedom, it has gained in terms of utility and convenience, IMHO.

The main reason I would like to go back to 1999 would be because I would be 20 years younger :)

> What the Internet has lost in terms of mystique and pioneering freedom, it has gained in terms of utility and convenience, IMHO.

Maybe I've got a bad case of the "back in my day", but I feel more and more that "mystique" is what makes life worth living.

Watching a lot of movies from the 60s-90s recently, it's striking how much more effort we needed to put into everyday life back then.

Want to meet a friend? Call their number, hope they're home and arrange a time. Want to watch a movie? Drive to the video store and hope they've got what you want. Out of food? You're driving to the nearest restaurant, no Uber Eats. Want to find out the median rainfall in Fiji? You're waiting for the library to open and digging through a stacks of musty old books.

Nowadays, everything's instantaneous - you want something, you get it. We've lowered the bar for almost everything.

If consumption and enjoyment no longer require any effort, doesn't that devalue the entire experience? What does that mean for life in general? Don't you think that humility comes from knowing the effort required to know or acquire things?

Hear hear. It's like the programming mindset has been applied to day to day life. Ruthless pursuit of efficiency and automation, maximum and continuous delegation to the system and machine - these things suffuse everything and are even elevated to the status of values. It makes sense with something as error-prone and cognitively challenging as code, especially considering how well suited machines are to handling it. But now these values have been transferred into the business of daily human living and taken to an extreme. How good an idea that is, and what the end results will be, those things aren't obvious to me.

> If consumption and enjoyment no longer require any effort, doesn't that devalue the entire experience? What does that mean for life in general? Don't you think that humility comes from knowing the effort required to know or acquire things?

This is an interesting perspective, surely. But the premise for reducing effort in some areas, as has always been the case with economic growth, is that we can focus that same limited effort on exploring new horizons, standing on the shoulders of giants, living in paradises of dreams past.

Look to the stars, for they will never limit your ambition.

>I enjoyed the first years of the Internet as well.

I think you mean that you enjoyed the first years of the Internet after it became known to the general public in 1993.

The first year of the Internet was 1969.

Added in anticipation of a nitpick: some writers like to reserve the word "Internet" to refer only to the period after the great switchover to Internet Protocol in 1986, but it was the same hosts hosting the same services (e.g., mailing lists, FTP sites, Netnews and Telnet) before and after the switchover.

I agree. Going back in time wouldnt be too bad. I miss the first days of twitter where i would have discussions with other engs on tech, or days where fewer but higher quality content was the norm.

We probably need a better filter. I stopped using fb years ago, same for twitter. No regrets