I’ve been exploring the fediverse and subbing and posting all over the damn place. Realizing lemmy can federate with kbin blew my mind. Not to mention the possibility of turning my old laptop into a personal server to host my own instance. Is this what it felt like to discover how the internet worked in the 90s?
Well that’s nostalgia right? This picture totally captures it and I swear I remember it on a magazine cover back in the day when Mortal Kombat 2 was coming out…
But I agree… The internet then could still be dangerous but it also felt so much more genuine? I was lucky enough to have dial up in the mid 90s, Google didn’t exist, webcrawler was there and it just seemed like everything was possible. Whitehouse.com (not gov) was porn and what a discovery that was!
Man I found a “3d” chat website where I met someone from “Australia” and my parents got pissed bc I was going to get long distance charges! I wrote a paper in 8th grade how you’d be able to buy things online and pick them up in a vending machine, and there’d be multiple computers in a whole house and got a D because it wasn’t based on facts!
Trying instill that wonder in my kids while being aware of contemporary concerns is such a conflict.
Yes, I agree with it being more genuine. Everyone was trying to figure out what the Internet meant and what you could do. It really felt like trekking into the unknown! I loved stumbling upon random websites, the flash games, the websites here and there, the blogs, the niche forums… I feel like the rise of social media and companies and the fact that companies figured out the people themselves were the product ruined a part of it somehow. I wish you good luck in incorporating that sense of adventure to your kids - I know it’s not easy with all the dangers online and outside. But the fact you’re trying to do that despite all is already so awesome.