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i'm losing my edge

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Started 3 years ago by th0m
Latest reply from blammo

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th0m
Beechwold
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the kids are coming up from behind... jeebus i must be getting old....
... even the idiots i know are sending me their podcasts, youtubes, web 2.0 apps, and enterprise level software solutions...
but *I* was there, ya know? who else feels me on some of these things?
random sample:
1985 ... max headroom, vic 20, vicmodem
1986 ... trading c64 games in the back rooms with the guys that had the special fast hack'em builds and parallel port cables for the 1541 drives, quantum link (which later sort of became AOL) and of course compuserve
1990 - 1991 - had almost 4mb of expanded ram on a 286 ... using procomm and ansi graphics on the boards... (walker?! theDRAW?!) war dialing sprintnet and tymnet with no real point, other than things i read on the boards ... fidonet... doorway games ... tradewars, etc...
1992 - gopher and telnet access on delphi, red boxing, possibly my first emails, at least in the net sense...
1994 - irc, hackin my ti85 with a bitmap picture of myself
1995 - my first usenet post (er, using my real name at least)
1996 - first web page (yes it is still up, no you can't have the link), and the radium mp3 codec that was actually optimized to run faster than the original ;p finally gave up .mod files hehehe
... and i guess the rest is history... i mean there are probably members on here with more cred, and plenty of lurkers laughing at this...
but JEEBUS... now there are billions of schmoes on the net and they're like "hey don't mess with me man, i've been on the next for 7 years, so i know" and man this place is getting CROWDED.
anyway... i was there... 1993 ... listening to the afghan whigs ... that is all.

Posted 3 years ago #
Manatee
The eternal present
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Yep. I don't look like a 95-lb CCAD freshman anymore, either. And I don't listen to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or whatever. Haha.
Most of my band-geek friends in high school (I was an art-geek) were on Clevenet. Is that old?

Posted 3 years ago #
Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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th0m wrote
but JEEBUS... now there are billions of schmoes on the net and they're like "hey don't mess with me man, i've been on the next for 7 years, so i know" and man this place is getting CROWDED.
anyway... i was there... 1993 ... listening to the afghan whigs ... that is all.
I feel your pain. I remember when you could rent an office over a bar, plug 20 (2400 and 14.4) modems into a UNIX box with a cool ASCII user menu your partner in crime cobbled together from shell script, plug a 56k DDS circuit into a jury-rigged "router" hanging off the SCSI bus (no kidding!) and call yourself an ISP.
good times... good times...

Posted 3 years ago #
Daz
Tweeting about some totally unimportant event
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My introduction to the internet was via AOL in 1995.
Sorry. :D

Posted 3 years ago #
brothermarcus
West Siiiide
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Fond memories of swapping C64 games/programs... even if it was crap I still had to get it, I mean really- was there a big difference between the releases of Zaxxon? Speedscript? Bank Street Writer?
I remember wanting BBSes to be big back in the day, and being excited about the future... now I've come to realize that the future is dumb- and that is about as effective a predictor you can use: imagine dumb, and the future will fall into your sights. Wanting everyone to have access to information meant that, well, everyone would end up online... and I don't like everyone. I refuse to get uptight about it though, the interwebs aren't mine, and if they want to be free and galavant with a mommyblogger that doesn't know how to use the camera on her Macbook... I'm okay with that.
You haven't lost your edge Th0m, and the internet didn't evolve into something unforeseen... it's just that dumb won, and providing something exciting and edgy back to the online experience for technofiles just doesn't have much of a profit margin.
I'm going back to writing my Love Boat fanfiction now, it's been real.

Posted 3 years ago #
Coremodels
Really close to Explorer's Club.
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I'm afraid I was far too busy playing the expansion of NWN2 in order to add to the nerdiness of this thread in any meaningful way :lol:

Posted 3 years ago #
JimL2

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Th0m haven't you noticed? There was a common thread behind the things you did. It wasn't the activities themselves that were important, but why you did them.
Podcasts, 2girls1cup youtube reactions, apps built with google's AJAX toolkit... they're entry-level nowadays. Do you think Hemingway would be impressed with a frat's blog posts about their eight-arm beer bong? Or Mozart with the pitch-shifting technology that keeps Cher and Madonna alive?

Get the Flash Video

Posted 3 years ago #

roy
Downtown
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I was not an early adopter of computer technology, just mobile phones. In the early 90s my bag phone was super heavy, a weird contraption with the handset cord attached to a base housed in a vinyl bag with a shoulder strap. Seemed convenient at the time.

But that's not what this post is about, it's about Thom, one of the most interesting, well-informed individuals on CU and far beyond. It's laughable to think that any of these internet punks have anything on you, Thom!

Thom is a brilliant funny guy. He has brains, heart, soul and really cool glasses. I never told him this but once we were discussing the impact of technology on mass communication and he said some stuff it took me months to understand. If Thom were just smart it'd be cool. But he has enormous style, personal and cerebral.

Losing your edge? I seriously doubt it.

Posted 3 years ago #

gramarye
In Exile
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The first thing I ever did on the Internet (at a friend's house ... my parents were late adopters) was play the original Doom. I forget what year that was.

I did my best to make up for lost time when my parents finally got the Internet in 1998, though. IRC, newsgroups, all the rest. Problem: by that time, so many of those things were already dying. RoadRunner officially stopped carrying newsgroups at all in July of this year, I think, but they were already just dead server space before then. The discussions here are far more lively.

Posted 3 years ago #

michaelcoyote
!seabus
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To be honest, I think the Internet lost it's edge...

Posted 3 years ago #

Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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michaelcoyote wrote To be honest, I think the Internet lost it's edge...

Truth

The only thing "edgy" about the intertubes nowadays is crap shock video like "1 guy 1 jar". The rest is settling down to the 'business as usual' mentality like any other utility service punctuated only by things like the worm that is circulating via facebook, weird 'art' experiments in mob mentality by 'Anonymous', and the botnets which are testing the limits of spam handling.

There IS still innovation, but it's subtler now. And being done in different areas. The internet itself is no longer a shiny new toy. I think the edge is more subtle now that society is changing in response to the internet faster than the internet itself, which is now very large, can adopt widespread changes.

Posted 3 years ago #

enzo

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Afghan Whigs!!!! I used to love them. I am with MC...the internet has lost its edge....there is something beyond.....first they need to start with global wireless connections anywhere and everywhere and for every single person. That would be cool. I still think it would be so cool to live like the Jetsons.

Posted 3 years ago #

Bear
The woods
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brothermarcus wrote You haven't lost your edge Th0m, and the internet didn't evolve into something unforeseen... it's just that dumb won, and providing something exciting and edgy back to the online experience for technofiles just doesn't have much of a profit margin.

Yes.

Word processors peaked at points like Emacs and MS Word 5 (hey -- there was a time when it wasn't pure evil). Games have gotten hyper-realistic but not appreciably more fun; in some ways Grand Theft Auto can't hold a candle to Zork's twisty passages. etc.

JimL2 wrote Th0m haven't you noticed? There was a common thread behind the things you did. It wasn't the activities themselves that were important, but why you did them.

Yes. Not variations on a theme, but innovation. Creativity.

roy wrote But that's not what this post is about, it's about Thom, one of the most interesting, well-informed individuals on CU and far beyond. It's laughable to think that any of these internet punks have anything on you, Thom!

Yes! Absolutely.

Favorite thread in quite a while.

enzo wrote Afghan Whigs!!!! ... I still think it would be so cool to live like the Jetsons.

:) ...

Posted 3 years ago #

Andrew Hall
Dennison Place (The Circles)
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Saying "the Internet" has lost its edge is like saying paint has lost its edge or musical notes have. It is a tool to an end and there are infinite ends. Of course, finding what appeals to you gets pretty hard in an infinite digistack.

What has happened is that the Internet (and computers) are no longer an end. To those of us with a geek bent, that is what is missed.

Posted 3 years ago #

enzo

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This is an ok idea...

Posted 3 years ago #

Columbuzz
Grandview
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Found him. Thread closed.

Although I think he objects to your use of the word "my," implying ownership of The Edge.

Posted 3 years ago #

Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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Andrew Hall wrote
What has happened is that the Internet (and computers) are no longer an end. To those of us with a geek bent, that is what is missed.

Yeah. I think that's pretty much what I was thinking when I wrote that it's turned into just another utility service.

The innovation is all coming from what people DO with it now. Some crazy stuff is happening, but it's not all "geek" or even technology related anymore.

It used to be fun just to get the darned thing to function.

Posted 3 years ago #

chrisgillespie
Short North/Victorian Village
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Rockmastermike wrote
Andrew Hall wrote
What has happened is that the Internet (and computers) are no longer an end. To those of us with a geek bent, that is what is missed.
Yeah. I think that's pretty much what I was thinking when I wrote that it's turned into just another utility service.
The innovation is all coming from what people DO with it now. Some crazy stuff is happening, but it's not all "geek" or even technology related anymore.
It used to be fun just to get the darned thing to function.

Interesting perspective. I don't mind it being utility. I love writing an elegant piece of code. Lately, tho, most apps (especially anything someone wants to call enterprise) are lacking anything interesting. Well.....they are more advanced than they used to be, but TONS of the programmers don't really understand what they are doing. It's good and bad. Everything was all about rapid app development, and there was this whole cool process of designing frameworks. Now, with all the frameworks out there, you're usually a fool to try to write your own. However, you're also a fool if you don't understand what whatever framework you select does and how to hack it. Lots of programmers that are at a loss if they can't use a design time control to accomplish what they need. I think developing cool apps is getting dumbed down in prefernce for RAD. It's not as fun.

However, this isn't necessarily where you were coming from, and I would also add, I don't think I ever had an edge. I just did what I needed to do for my job, from mainframe thru distributed apps to intranet (for ease of distribution). I've done very little on the internet other than as a user...

Posted 3 years ago #

joev
Merion Village
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Eh, I'm happy enough being an end user.

Posted 3 years ago #

enzo

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I just like the thought/idea that everyone would have their "connection line" so that you would never have to enter a bunch of different password/login series throughout the day....like you would login when you wake up in the morning and automatically connected to all your internet acoounts, bank accounts, calendars, phones, etc. as you went through your day all of your activities are recorded for you only and all of your calories consumed and burned as well as hydration and sleep levels and vitamin/herb/mineral deficiencies calculated too! Also, you would not have to carry cards it would be in whatever device or chip...all your financial info, ID, etc.

Posted 3 years ago #

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