The internet died years ago
Dot matrix printer news, McDonald's murals, and old embarrassing emails
Excerpts from my notes/journals/screenshots from the week
Did the internet die years ago?
Did I miss the funeral?
Its eulogy seems to be this article: The internet is already over by Sam Kriss (Sep 2022) found through Default Friend.
Two years old — how did I miss it?
Regardless, I truly believe in the internet’s resurrection.
All unsourced quotes scattered below are from this essay.
In 1977, Ken Olsen declared that ‘there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.’
LINK: Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer
Like Greg Swan’s fax machine but possibly more useful. I remember my grandpa printing out software manuals with his dot matrix, folding and tearing the edges of the paper, the sound of EERRRAAARTTTTTTTTT.
The things I hope for are doomed, and everything I try to create will be a failure, but so will everything I despise.
a midwest emo song about the internet, no wonder i like it
Found an old email I sent in 2004. It’s embarrassing and weird and feels like I’m reading something someone else wrote. I’m telling people I changed my email … but it goes on and on and ON. Paragraph upon paragraph of my life story for the last couple years where I changed my thinking from one wrong thing to another wrong thing (except I didn’t know that).
I forwarded it to Emily for a laugh. The next day I got in her car and it started playing ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ on Audible. Dumbstruck. Took me a second to realize I mentioned it in the letter, and E must have downloaded it.
“Why are you reading this,” I ask, “it’s wrong about almost everything.”
“I love it,” she said, “it feels like it’s written in a different language. I don’t understand 80% of what he’s saying. It’s so flowery and beautiful.” (giggles)
In the future—not the distant future, but ten years, five—people will remember the internet as a brief dumb enthusiasm, like phrenology or the dirigible. They might still use computer networks to send an email or manage their bank accounts, but those networks will not be where culture or politics happens. The idea of spending all day online will seem as ridiculous as sitting down in front of a nice fire to read the phone book.
It won’t feel like spending all day online because life will require online; it will be the air we breath. We won’t feel online any more than we’re earthing or electriciting.
LINK: .io might disappear like .yu
I have some io domains, including my current homepage, so this is no good.
“The short answer is that -- if ICANN follows the policy -- then following the removal of IO from ISO-3166-2, the ccTLD has five years to initiate an orderly shutdown.”
Stupid.
People will cheerfully admit that the internet has destroyed their attention spans, but what it’s really done away with is your ability to think.
I can’t tell if I like this essay because I agree with it or because it’s clever. Reminds me of Neil Postman, a screed from someone who loves to hate, a prophetic utterance of a potential future that is almost certainly wrong but engrossingly compelling.
Stayed at a place with an AI assistant concierge and every answer was unhelpful or wrong. Suggested they use another LLM agent to estimate accuracy of response before responding. Compiled a list of all the things they could have done better. Now we have a meeting with them tomorrow.
LINK: Cabel Sasser - XOXO 2024
Worth it for the McDonald’s mural story alone.
HE BOUGHT THE WHOLE ARCHIVE!!!!
When I’m listlessly killing time on the internet, there is nothing. The mind does not wander. I am not there. That rectangular hole spews out war crimes and cutesy comedies and affirmations and porn, all of it mixed together into one general-purpose informational goo, and I remain in its trance, the lifeless scroll, twitching against the screen until the sky goes dark and I’m one day closer to the end. You lose hours to—what? An endless slideshow of barely interesting images and actively unpleasant text. Oh, cool—more memes! You know it’s all very boring, brooding nothing, but the internet addicts you to your own boredom. I’ve tried heroin: this is worse. More numb, more blank, more nowhere. A portable suicide booth; a device for turning off your entire existence. Death is no longer waiting for you at the far end of life. It eats away at your short span from the inside out.
Idea: fried soup dumpling tacos
The newest apps even literalise this: everyone has to post a selfie at exactly the same time, an inaudible call to prayer ringing out across the world. Recently, at a bar, I saw the room go bright as half the patrons suddenly started posing with their negronis. This is called being real.
Watched Anne of Green Gables (1985) with Emily and we both cried.
“I hate this movie so much,” she said, eyes red, tears streaming.
Without even passing out of date, every mode of internet-speak already sounds antiquated. Aren’t you embarrassed? Can’t you hear, under the chatter of these empty forms, a long low ancient whine, the last mewl of that cat who wants to haz cheezburger?
Solvang, CA “the Danish capital of America” is possibly the worst place on earth. Is this for people who have never been to Europe? Isn’t it obvious this is just a Sysco-delivered car-infested dystopian nightmare tourist trap? Not even worthy to rate, would only return with an enemy to briefly ruin their afternoon.
The more you relentlessly optimise your network-facing self, the more you chase the last globs of loose attention, the more frazzled we all become, and the less anyone will be able to sustain any interest at all.
Lost wifi AND cell service in Nowhere, Big Sur and felt genuinely scared. What if something happened — no communication at all? Had to really confront myself. Huge bang in the middle of the night. Decided to throw chairs down the stairs if someone broke in.
Your frictionless digital future, your very important culture wars, your entire sense of self—it’s just a waste byproduct of the perfectly ordinary, centuries-old global circulation of fuel, capital, and Islam. It turns out that if these three elements are arranged in one particular way, people will start behaving strangely. They’ll pretend that by spending all day on the computer they’re actually fighting fascism, or standing up for women’s sex-based rights, as if the entire terrain of combat wasn’t provided by a nightmare head-chopping theocratic state. They’ll pretend that it’s normal to dance alone in silence for a front-facing camera, or that the intersection of art and technology is somehow an interesting place to be.
Reading this sitting in silence, alone at the bar at Houston’s, on an iPad, completely engrossed and wishing I could write like this.
thy kingdom come
Her: “What does that mean?”
Me: “It’s a prayer yearning for the world to end.”
Her: “Oh, thy means your?”
Me: “Yeah, it’s from the king james bible.”
Her: “It’s really cool.”
Me: “Not really, how do you even know about this?”
Her: “It’s posted on the outside of ▇▇▇▇’s school.”
Woke up thinking about ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and all the drama going on. Felt like maybe they were feeling lost and could use help. Wrote an email offering to introduce them to my executive coach, then deleted it, afraid it would be misunderstood.
that user data could power a system of terrifyingly precise targeted advertising was a lie. It simply does not work.
AND THE SPELL IS B R O K E N
The beauty of this writing can’t hide how wrong that is. It does power the system and does work, for better or worse.
Lawyer: “You’re doing everything wrong, it’s built on the wrong foundation. You’re focused on candles but you’re not thinking about the miserable cake. You should have started with a better foundation 20 years ago.”
Me: “Yeah, ok, but I can’t go back in time, can we move on to now?”
Things will survive in proportion to how well they’ve managed to insulate themselves from the internet and its demands. If anything interesting ever happens again, it will not be online. You will not get it delivered to your inbox. It will not have a podcast.
Clearly this was written before gen AI could create a podcast about itself.
Him: “It’s Thursday so that means we bring lunch in for the ▇▇▇▇▇ crew, today it’s Disney-themed, so those are um, hmm, they’re…”
Me: “Churros?”
Him: “Yes, churros. Like the ones at Disney. You should really have one. It’s rare we have anything this fun. And there’s some Mickey-shaped beignets…”
Someone: “I had one of those, it was really good.”
They insisted I take two pastries, double-stacked, ridiculous.
I threw them in the trash as I walked out.
A fitting end:
Whatever it is I’m doing here, you should not be part of it. Do not click the button below this paragraph, do not type in your email address to receive new posts straight to your inbox, and for the love of God, if you have any self-respect, do not even think about giving me any money. There is still time for you to do something else. You can still unchain yourself from this world that will soon, very soon, mean absolutely nothing.
On that note,
// Josh
"people will remember the internet as a brief dumb enthusiasm" ❤️