In the past there were lots of hobby OSes, new programming languages, weird and quirky tech (esoteric programming languages) and much more. Today, the web feels dead. I often feel like I am the only one 'online'. What happened? Is is just me, or is this real. Younger people also don't seem to be interested in tech at all (GenZ), they just sit and watch tiktok etc. Is the internet actually dead or is this just an illusion?
Well, every young person I know is constantly glued to the phone watching tiktok. I don't mean to be negative. I installed tiktok myself, but I could not really understand what they like about it. Maybe you can explain? I tried to understand (seriously), kept swiping etc, but it simply did not work for me. I would love to understand them better. But that's the point. It's hard to communicate with them. They seem very shy.
I showed them my game on the c64 ;-) No, I talked a lot with my elders when I was young. And I also talked a lot about tech to millenials when they were young, even helped them to learn coding or other tech. It's just that the youngest generation seems so insanely hard to reach. Or maybe I am just getting too old.
It is not dead, but Google and OpenAI are definitely strangling the internet - if it were for them, you would never find any new website beside the 30-50 that they promote. I learn about new things only by word of mouth - sometimes here on HN, or in random comments on the internet. Just today I learned from a phoronix comment about asterinas (https://asterinas.github.io/index.html), a new hobby++ OS written in Rust...
It is getting harder to find things, but it is not yet impossible, if you keep your eyes open. But if you blink you miss it...
Also it's not like we've stopped build interesting stuff like you mentioned. Maybe it's a lot less people but there are still plenty of hobby OSes and programming langs built for fun
My young adult son doesn’t do computing projects but he does all kinds of projects like cutting up a guitar and ukulele and mashing them together. It’s probably worth a TikTok video.
That's nice, but tiktok seems such a weird way of sharing it. I mean, how can you search for certain recordings/performances or discuss it? It's just an ever going list of movies, with no structure, you cannot even predict what comes next... It seems hard to follow someone at all. You just have to wait until a certain clip comes along. It's total chaos. But like I said, maybe I am just getting too old.
even if I don't always practice it. I am sick and tired of Mastodonsters who think I'm a sell-out for being on Bluesky because I think you should be on all the socials.
It's not dead, but it is changing in a way I both vehemently disagree with, but also feel is indicative of a wider societal upheaval that nobody seems to want to discuss here in any serious capacity.
The early internet (pre-1995 or so) required a lot of knowledge to utilize. You had to know how to configure your modem, which area codes were local calls, how to install and configure a web browser, how URLs worked, how connectivity to different services might function, etc. As a result, the early web was populated with societal "outcasts" of a sort, people who found a vast and empty digital space that, with some elbow grease and a bit of learning, could be turned into a garden of their own. This was a "peak" hobbyist cycle, before the dot-com bubble when experimentation was encouraged and affordable, albeit not fiscally rewarding in many cases. It was, in essence, a passion project.
Starting with Web 2.0, the movement toward centralization started in earnest. IRC networks and instant messengers with open client specs were replaced with social media sites and centralized messaging. This briefly fostered another "peak", with RSS feeds and self-hosting taking off as compute became cheap and bandwidth affordable. However, both of these are antithetical to the goal of Capital at the time, which was centralization through walled gardens, disconnected services, and user isolation, and thus were gradually stripped out by leadership or stakeholders as a means to boost their bottom lines.
Also around the time of Web 2.0 was the pinnacle of the Open Source movement. Thousands of projects reached maturity simultaneously, enabling fantastic new approaches to server architecture and software design. These were embraced by for-profit companies, and many (but not all) contributed back to the projects in code or capital to drive more innovation. This in turn drove more experimentation, more projects, and more hobbyist innovations.
Starting in the 2010s though, we begin to see the splintering of the web into two divisive camps: the world of entrenched megacorps and Big Tech, flush with capital from VCs or revenue and built atop Open Source; and the world of the "Natives", for lack of a better term, people who understood how the internet worked, who saw value in decentralization and open access. These two camps remained initial allies, but gradually developed hostilities as it became clear that one side wanted to extinguish the other outright and seize the digital territory for themselves alone.
That brings us to "web 3" and the modern era. Hobbyist technology isn't dead, but the outsized impact of Big Tech and captured Government Bodies has shoved such hobbyist efforts further and further into the dark. The "digital supply chain" garbage fabricated by Big Tech and Consultant companies has effectively forced all the blame for flaws onto the very same Open Source projects these companies created value from but never contributed back to, in an attempt to extinguish further development so that they can retain their moat over potential startups or competitors. The Open Source devs who supported these passion projects are leaving the field, either from burnout, the need for gainful employment, or just retiring in general, which narrows the field further. Young people aren't taking over not because they're addicted to social media (but make no mistake, social media is a problem), but because it's hard enough to find a job that can pay the rent, nevermind allow them the free time to contribute to Open Source regularly.
The internet of today is essentially a battlefield of monied interests attempting to kill off the very projects that enabled their success in the first place, and hobbyists are losing ground. AI slop infects and poisons search results, reducing onramps into Open Source projects or technology in general. A deluge of products and languages, each targeting specific use cases or paradigms, leads to choice paralysis when bootstrapping new projects (or infighting when new contributors want to change how things are done, e.g. Linux's Rust debate). Objectively good tools like Kubernetes are only really functional when managed by said corporate entity, and a PITA to run yourself - far harder and more complex than propping up ye olde Apache box and IRC daemon in the 2000s, and for minimal gains for hobbyists. Corporations refuse to contribute back their source code improvements, because that's their edge over the competition. And none of that really touches the social aspect of depressed wages, increased unemployment, longer working hours, higher costs of living, and employment precarity that further poisons the talent well for hobbyist tech, or government regulations that favor Capital interests over citizens.
Arriving back at where I started this post: the hobbyist internet and tech isn't dead yet. There's still really cool projects out there, made by passionate people who just want to share that neat thing they made and help others. Unfortunately, we're fighting a losing battle against entities that would rather see only those with money and acceptable speech/positions be allowed online at all, and that's not a fight we can win solely by being online.
Thanks, I thought I was the only one noticing this.
One interesting point you make is that young people have a very hard time with the economical situation. A lot of them seem apathetic, they literally say to me that they don't want to work because they cannot afford anything anyway (here in the Netherlands the housing prices are insane, an simple appartment now costs half a million euros in the Hague, and that's not even the city center).
Apathy is always a symptom, never a cause, or so I’ve come to learn. What I used to blame on “voter apathy” was really just a symptom of politics in the USA becoming so stagnant and detached from the struggles of workers that any intense emotion or platform would’ve lit a fire under the electorate (see the optimism of the initial Obama campaign, the repugnancy of the Tea Party, or the naked hostility of Trump). Likewise, apathy in the case you describe is their way of communicating that they see no value in engaging with a system they perceive is broken, which is itself a profound warning that they’re susceptible to demagogues and populism. A healthy society recognizes apathy as a red flag and addresses it early, while declining societies ignore it (Japan) or blame the apathetic (USA) for the failings of the system.
Do not blame the apathetic for simply refusing to play a rigged game. Instead, listen to their grievances and work with them to bring about positive change.
It's grim because it's mostly a made up, self-centered, apocalyptic view of the world - great in one's youth and now fallen. I think your other instinct - 'maybe I'm just getting old' is truer, and better - that doesn't have to be nearly as grim as the coping-mechanism-cum-manifesto in the GP comment would have you believe.
Alternatively, notice how detractors to a well thought-out argument that attempts to distill decades of history into a single comment within a larger thread, immediately devolve into flailing insults rather than offering a compelling counter-narrative.
Sure, pvg's bite-sized nugget of McWisdom holds generally true for any topic covering a span of time and wrapped in the cloak of biological aging, but notice how it also does nothing to provide sustenance in the form of tangible examples, counter-arguments, or advice. It's convenient, sure, but hardly nourishing.
I don't think you misrepresenting the period in bombastic terms for effect provides sustenance or requires counter-arguments because it's just you misrepresenting the period in bombastic terms for effect. I think the advice of not taking a sequence of Manichean tropes and slogans too much to heart remains pretty useful!
they just sit and watch tiktok etc.
The no-longer-young griping about whatever it is the youths are up to remains a permanent interest, at least.
It is getting harder to find things, but it is not yet impossible, if you keep your eyes open. But if you blink you miss it...
It's not like young people are disinterested in tech but rather captivated by different fields than you may have been.
(I am gen-z btw)
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-a...
even if I don't always practice it. I am sick and tired of Mastodonsters who think I'm a sell-out for being on Bluesky because I think you should be on all the socials.
The early internet (pre-1995 or so) required a lot of knowledge to utilize. You had to know how to configure your modem, which area codes were local calls, how to install and configure a web browser, how URLs worked, how connectivity to different services might function, etc. As a result, the early web was populated with societal "outcasts" of a sort, people who found a vast and empty digital space that, with some elbow grease and a bit of learning, could be turned into a garden of their own. This was a "peak" hobbyist cycle, before the dot-com bubble when experimentation was encouraged and affordable, albeit not fiscally rewarding in many cases. It was, in essence, a passion project.
Starting with Web 2.0, the movement toward centralization started in earnest. IRC networks and instant messengers with open client specs were replaced with social media sites and centralized messaging. This briefly fostered another "peak", with RSS feeds and self-hosting taking off as compute became cheap and bandwidth affordable. However, both of these are antithetical to the goal of Capital at the time, which was centralization through walled gardens, disconnected services, and user isolation, and thus were gradually stripped out by leadership or stakeholders as a means to boost their bottom lines.
Also around the time of Web 2.0 was the pinnacle of the Open Source movement. Thousands of projects reached maturity simultaneously, enabling fantastic new approaches to server architecture and software design. These were embraced by for-profit companies, and many (but not all) contributed back to the projects in code or capital to drive more innovation. This in turn drove more experimentation, more projects, and more hobbyist innovations.
Starting in the 2010s though, we begin to see the splintering of the web into two divisive camps: the world of entrenched megacorps and Big Tech, flush with capital from VCs or revenue and built atop Open Source; and the world of the "Natives", for lack of a better term, people who understood how the internet worked, who saw value in decentralization and open access. These two camps remained initial allies, but gradually developed hostilities as it became clear that one side wanted to extinguish the other outright and seize the digital territory for themselves alone.
That brings us to "web 3" and the modern era. Hobbyist technology isn't dead, but the outsized impact of Big Tech and captured Government Bodies has shoved such hobbyist efforts further and further into the dark. The "digital supply chain" garbage fabricated by Big Tech and Consultant companies has effectively forced all the blame for flaws onto the very same Open Source projects these companies created value from but never contributed back to, in an attempt to extinguish further development so that they can retain their moat over potential startups or competitors. The Open Source devs who supported these passion projects are leaving the field, either from burnout, the need for gainful employment, or just retiring in general, which narrows the field further. Young people aren't taking over not because they're addicted to social media (but make no mistake, social media is a problem), but because it's hard enough to find a job that can pay the rent, nevermind allow them the free time to contribute to Open Source regularly.
The internet of today is essentially a battlefield of monied interests attempting to kill off the very projects that enabled their success in the first place, and hobbyists are losing ground. AI slop infects and poisons search results, reducing onramps into Open Source projects or technology in general. A deluge of products and languages, each targeting specific use cases or paradigms, leads to choice paralysis when bootstrapping new projects (or infighting when new contributors want to change how things are done, e.g. Linux's Rust debate). Objectively good tools like Kubernetes are only really functional when managed by said corporate entity, and a PITA to run yourself - far harder and more complex than propping up ye olde Apache box and IRC daemon in the 2000s, and for minimal gains for hobbyists. Corporations refuse to contribute back their source code improvements, because that's their edge over the competition. And none of that really touches the social aspect of depressed wages, increased unemployment, longer working hours, higher costs of living, and employment precarity that further poisons the talent well for hobbyist tech, or government regulations that favor Capital interests over citizens.
Arriving back at where I started this post: the hobbyist internet and tech isn't dead yet. There's still really cool projects out there, made by passionate people who just want to share that neat thing they made and help others. Unfortunately, we're fighting a losing battle against entities that would rather see only those with money and acceptable speech/positions be allowed online at all, and that's not a fight we can win solely by being online.
One interesting point you make is that young people have a very hard time with the economical situation. A lot of them seem apathetic, they literally say to me that they don't want to work because they cannot afford anything anyway (here in the Netherlands the housing prices are insane, an simple appartment now costs half a million euros in the Hague, and that's not even the city center).
Do not blame the apathetic for simply refusing to play a rigged game. Instead, listen to their grievances and work with them to bring about positive change.
Sure, pvg's bite-sized nugget of McWisdom holds generally true for any topic covering a span of time and wrapped in the cloak of biological aging, but notice how it also does nothing to provide sustenance in the form of tangible examples, counter-arguments, or advice. It's convenient, sure, but hardly nourishing.
That's how I deal with it anyway. YMMV.