Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The internet was better before...

Over the past few years I've heard lots of complaints about 'the internet was better before everyone used Facebook' and it got me thinking.  That much like the strata in rocks you can determine your geological internet age based on the first thing you remember complaining about.  So moving backwards

Smartazoic - the modern era (2011 to present)
If you haven't yet complained about the new entry into the internet of any groups at all then the odds are that you are part of the latest major influx characterised by a dominance of mobile usage.

Socialem - the social era (2009-2010)
Socialem's are characterised by their complaints that things were much better before everyone started using mobile phones to use Facebook or other social media sites.  These people complain bitterly about instagram.

Broadem - the broadband era (2003-2008)
This is the era of major adoption of broadband and the rise of YouTube these people tend to complain about the rise of Facebook and other social media sites and don't understand why people can't just be happy with Yahoo and BBC News.  They complain that all these new 'social' users are just adding rubbish to the internet rather than the managed content of their day.

AOLem - the dialup era (1998-2002)
This is the era of the mainstream pioneers, the people who used AOL and other elements to get online.  People who remember what lag really is and complained bitterly about the new stupid sites with their insane bandwidth requirements and 'why oh why would anyone want to watch video'.  Their complaint was that the broadem era took away the 'personal' nature of a dial-up modem and also meant that they couldn't use their home connection when they went to their parents or friends house.  The explosion of broadband also meant there were 'too many people' around.

Establishism - the foundations of the WWW (1994-1997)
These are the folks who had access before the dialup era and who complained bitterly as AOLers started coming into Usenet and ruining the internet.  These folks used the WWW in fact many built the WWW but a distain was had for those who hadn't coped with Mosaic.

Jurrassic - Before WWW (1980-1993)
These are the folks who had network connections and lived in FTP, MUDS, telnet and Usenet and bemoaned the sudden lack of technical skills required to 'browse' these new fangled websites.  What was the fun in something that displayed an image in one go rather than requiring a uuencode/decode process?

So which era do you belong to?  Or are there other classifications and strata that should be used?

1 comment:

Noons said...

Just call it PFB and AFB.
Pre-Facebook and After-Facebook.
Simple! :)