I agreee, and I also have a bunch of other jumbled thoughts that go along with it. Like how social media + smartphones have moved people away from writing longer, thought-out pieces that require a proper keyboard to compose.

Back in the early days, internet service accounts usually came with a bit of hosting space. Or you could get a Geocities account, or some web space from your college or university, and you could start creating your own website. I thought that was so empowering back in 1997. It seems like most of the people who use the internet now just consume it, or maybe produce tiny bits and pieces on social media. I think back then we interacted via internet in much more meaningful ways. Remember those long debates on usenet, or mailing lists, or early discussion boards? What happened to all of that? Are we too busy sharing crap on social media? How do people even get started in web development now?

Or, there’s also all our convoluted development methods that seem so essential. We don’t pop static HTML files up on an FTP server anymore. We need deployment processes, and development environments, and CMS’s. (Which is why my personal site has been dead for a year and a half!)

For me I was also scared off by commenters. The kind of people who comment without reading, or trying to understand what you’re saying. Or that time I vented about a certain operating system and it got onto the front page of Digg.

Maybe I should get that personal site going again so I can ramble on about this some more 🙂