Re: [44net] An apology for the Internet from the people who built it

It is funny that most of the nominees are younger than the internet. And they don't know better than a commercial structure filled with advertisement, spam and social manipuation, not to talk about knowing an internet without google, facebook, twitter and reddit. There was a time when there was only ftp and gopher and e-mail and NCSA Mosaic. Back then, yahoo and altavista where the leading search engines (and google did not exist yet), people used cuseemee for feeble tries to get a video link up, user socialized only on IRC and primitive BBS style forums. And there was basically no advertisement, whatsoever, and minimal, mostly ethic, hacking. Then these guys came up, and made the whole thing a business and a mess. So actually they are the ones to blame, and are not to be seen as role models and innocent victims. These are exactly some of the people that screwed all up by making something beautifully neutral and without borders into the hideous commercial, profit driven product we have today. - Marius Those were the days ... I was a FidoNet sysop. I *THINK* my node ID was