Do you wish to go back to the pre-social networking/ FB internet days ?

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live without the net the way it is today!

 

i'll restate what i said in TFP 4.0. the internet is the goddam devil. i realize that i sound like a rabid slobberin lunatic when i get back on my soapbox but the amount of internet culture that is leaking into the real world is twisted and disturbing. if people are pulling themselves away from the computer only to talk about things they found on the internet, there isn't much hope for mankind returning to nature, and by extension, the place where he physically evolved to live. i have no problem with the internet as an instructive tool, or even as entertainment with netflix and the like, but i completely HATE all social networking for the sake of social networking, its melting away what it means to be a human being instead of a binary representation online of our actual self.
/frothy-mouthed soapbox rant

 

If you can actually find and use the tech answers, that you are looking for, then you're not who I was referring to. Taking a while to find answers, prove a certain amount of tenaciousness that a lot of people lack these days too.

 

I'm a youngster, so I grew up as the Internet proper was in it's final periods of evolution in the late 90s. The worst I experienced was dial up and geocities. That being said, I can certainly recall the days without the Internet being available to every rube with a modem, and while it certainly had it's intellectual advantages, I think it's too awesome of a tool to want to go back to those times.

 

Huh?

 

My footprint gets smaller all the time. No facebook, no twitter, and message boards down to nearly nothing.

 

I somewhat agree and disagree about the last statement. I think people who are socially aware and socially acute use the social network as an extension of themselves -- its just another means to an end -- getting together with friends, meeting new people, arranging dates etc etc. People who have always been socially awkward / introspective / shy may see it as a "ok-good-enough-I-see-what-everyones-doing-so-i-can-stay-at-home-and-feel-OK" and thus use it as a replacement for their social lives. The latter is probably what you are referring to..

Yeah .. likewise. All this privacy stuff. As others alluded to -- we kind of lost the internet where we can just be our anonymous selves. I know that there's still alot of anonymity left, *if* you put ALOT of effort into it. Sure you can not sign up for fb, g+, etc, not use your real names. But c'mon, with basic network analytics by both FB and G+, they can know who you are easily by tracking your browser footprint, with IP, and your cookies. Ok, I guess you can forbid cookies and whatnot, surf in private mode -- but then that just means we lost the greatness of the old internet, and that in this current day and age we have to go completely out of our means to stay "free" on the internet.

 

I laugh at your references to 1200 and 9600 baud modems! My first modem was 300 baud. My first printer was a Teletype model 35 that ran at 110 baud.

In the late 80's, I had an employee who invited me to a meeting of his BBS club. They would go to a dark, noisy bar in downtown Montreal, armed with pencils and pads of paper. They would pass notes to each other without saying a word, only winks and smiles. Apparently, it was just like a BBS session, but with beer and music!

 

I personally love teh FB type of stuff, but I also am in the group of people who dont post stupid Sh*t and know what shoe to wear in public.
FB networking helped me line up a job/transfer that I otherwise would not have even known about. In a world of "who you know is more important that what you know" social websites can be very useful.

The good ol days of sim city 2000 and my 14baud modem were frustrating, cause I was in the prime of geekness and technology had not caught up to what I wanted it to be. 4MB of RAM was hot shit in 95, but I knew life could be faster and better.

Now at least, windows and processors do some of the things I want out of life. Like the dishes.

I would'nt go back to pre-FB days if I had a choice. But I would go back to a time when kids wrote real English and actually spelled out words (txting and what not).

 

The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages for me. I am not a phone person, really, so use of technology for communications makes my life work.

 

There is a reason I keep my real identity on TFP separate from Facebook. I wouldn't even dare post some of the stuff I write here on Facebook. I wouldn't want to upset people in real life that I know. How many parents do I know in real life that think their kids are great where I see them as boring timewasters? My political views will seperate half of the people I know. Even now, I am following too many far-left-wing things and it causes problems. Before Facebook, people might of assumed, now they know. And I won't even get into if my employer spies on me, it is what they do.

It isn't all evil however, I have met up with college friends that have moved, I was able to find out things that I wouldn't have know otherwise, and I wish we had Facebook back when I was in high school.

Now, I do think people are too addicted to it and phones. I spent two weekends in Vegas, no phone, no camera, no Internet...and it was perfect. People need to learn to post the important stuff, and also be able to walk away from it when it is right to.

 

Great story, but if cocaine or illegal arms trafficking wasn't somehow involved in this, these guys were total losers.