Gonna spend the morning giving this a read. I'd also like to also recommend, in case any one is dreading the "ugh boss talk", the book "The Fred Factor" by Mark Sanborn [1].
> Although to be fair, he does tend to revert by the start of his next story.
I'd say that's most of the Discworld series though. Protagonist is living peaceful, MacGuffin ensues chaos, Protagonist (or Arbitrary Thing) saves the day, the Disc goes back to normal, and the Turtle continues to move.
Discworld is my favorite series and I think Hogfather and Feets of Clay should be mandatory reads for people going into AI.
Referencing does not necessarily equate to sentiment though. Similar to seeing Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes peeing on thing decals isn't representative to the admiration to the comic series. The "woop woop woop woop" adult voice is another core element to US culture making fun of authorative figures, but doesn't dismiss them as unneed aspects to life.
I'm still on Facebook (and Digg for those HNers that hop on to all the tech boards - you know I see you), but it's to keep up with some family that are there. But I adopted a simple catchphrase (GET OFF THE INTERNET) and time my posts for Sunday mornings to get all them folks that were waking up and immediately scrolling. Repeat that for a few weeks, and I think its helped give people the "please disconnect" message.
I'm a huge wrestling and movie dork, so... screens. And the embedded videos on Reddit didn't help since I could watch wrestling on /r/SquaredCircle rather than support the product I like. In conversations, I've blamed The Walking Dead, as that was the first show I recall encouraging people to "hop online to chat" while the new episodes aired. Then "live tweeting" became a thing and here we are.
Friends and family are still there, but they've at least gone from the "grow your business online" or "complain about politics" to talking about the NFL, or a painting they finished, or some music piece they're working on.
I still want to disconnect more, but we don't really have a cure for "shiny rock addiction" yet.
We had a few trees fall in our backyard last year and one of the first things I did was throw a picture into Photoshop for its generative fill tool. I removed the fallen trees, then added some raised garden beds and a gazebo (for good measure).
I'll play around with the tool a bit later, as the above is an idea I have for a homework assignment. I'd be happy to chat off HN about some of the ways this type of tool would be super beneficial for landscapers/engineers.
Here's one from my old AOL days. We originally just used email, AOL message boards, and a scheduled weekly chatroom, but once the Web took over it merged into Starmen.net [2]
Since we're on a "reminsence about legacy Internet" trend right now, here's the opening to [1]:
"What most people forget to remember is that it’s not just about the game. It’s about the people, it’s about the newsletters, it’s about the discussions, the trivia, the polls, the websites, and the meetings. Everything that was a part of the club was a part of the community, and there was so much involved that it was almost too much to handle. Who had the time to be a member of some 15 Online clubs? I can distinctly remember sending out invitations to join Moonside and receiving replies along the lines of “Sorry, I’m already in like 5 of these things.” Now, I wish there were more clubs and to any of you who have one: I will readily join. The only last great, recently active club I can think of now is the EarthBound Gang, arguably the greatest Online EarthBound Club ever. In early 1999, a lot of the clubs started dying out. I know that mine began to slow down, only to be restarted in the fall of 99’, and again in the summer of 00’. But as a whole, the EB clubs were never restarted, which is a shame, because some of them were downright fun."
The problem is "fandoms" as a whole have now become such toxic hellscapes I'd rather just enjoy the game/movie/TV series myself and completely ignore what anyone else's opinion of it is.
I don't need things that bring me joy to be ruined by the most obsessive weirdos in the world.
That's easily solved by turning off comments or forcing every comment to be approved by an admin before it was displayed; much easier back then as there simply weren't that many people online. The "Web 2.0 read/write web" of XBL lobbies, Battle.net and Discord perverted gaming culture to a point of no return.
Sites back then had benevolent dictators that curated an experience for fans. I think in many ways it worked better than the democratized communities we have today.
It wasn’t so much “benevolent dictator” as it was “you’re in my house, so quit being a dick”. Toxic fans certainly existed but this approach usually led to them splintering off to create their own thing that’d inevitably wither away.
(You can perhaps substitute “wasn’t so much” for some form of “in addition to”)
While I agree with current "Top-Level Internet" as I call it, the blurb is referring to the '99-'00s era when we were still very much disconnected. Those clubs had a forum on AOL and that was it.
I think Discord is where the "New Internet" is forming, because that's where this generation of kids are hanging out. We were in the Nintendo chat rooms, and they're in the modern day equivalents. We just think they are on Twitch and Kick because that's where the grown ups are playing games, but remember there's a reason Roblox is popular.
I remember having to do an image map as part of a web design project in school, circa 2005. True to 2005, the image was one simple rectangular banner at the top of the page, with text for different pages like About and Portfolio etc. placed along it. It felt like a (cool) hack that you could define regions for the text to route to different pages on click.
Of course we have modern solutions [0] nowadays but that sure seemed cool 20 years ago!
Map wasn’t really the thing that enabled all of those designs, even though it was certainly often used to build them.
We just didn’t have a million and one layouts and device sizes to handle back then and so you could get really creative with available space. Even CSS Zen Garden later on had designs that worked much better on the limited screen sizes of that era - which don’t work well today.
Flat design trends killed off the rest of it I think.
Likewise, we've always liked to "name things". My personal desktop is named "Foundation" (first built PC) and my car is named "Big Boi" (first adult purchase). Generic names are fine for operational equipment, but no one wants to refer to natural disasters as "HURR-2026-EC02". That's why COVID is "COVID" instead of "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2".
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fred-Factor-Passion-Ordinary-Extraord...