Thread

1. sublinear · 1790970053 · focus · HN ↗

   > ... embodying the playfulness, technical ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that characterized the early Internet community.

   We're now considering 2001 "the early internet community"? Some people must still have whiplash from how quickly things changed. Shopping malls were already feeling the impact of ecommerce by this point.

   Also, in hindsight, the 2000s wasn't really all that collaborative compared to now.

   1. dn3500 · 1790977066 · focus · HN ↗

      The internet was 19 years old in 2001, and it's 44 now. To me, turning off the NSF backbone in 1995 marks the end of the early internet, because that's when commercial traffic was allowed everywhere with no restrictions. So I'm with you, but others will have different opinions.

      1. djtango · 1790978087 · focus · HN ↗

         In 2001 downloading a video could take days and the phone ringing could torpedo that download. Playing RTS games online was like a game of russian roulette

         1. excannuk · 1790991058 · focus · HN ↗

            [dead]

         2. rhplus · 1791001522 · focus · HN ↗

            By 2001 the Internet - or specifically the web - had already bubbled and crashed. If anything, 2001 was the reset for the start of Web 2.0
   2. goodmythical · 1791061480 · focus · HN ↗

      The age of an average new mother in the US is 27 meaning that 2001 is likely before these new mothers were forming memories.

      Of the current living population, roughly more than a third were born after 2001. (Are less than 25 years old).

      So the average firstborn is now being born to a mother who has no memory of 2001, and a third of the population didn't yet exist.

      Seems fair to characterize the time in a historical way.

      1. sublinear · 1791104046 · focus · HN ↗

         What? You're also saying two thirds of the population know better.

         1. goodmythical · 1791132463 · focus · HN ↗

            I most certainly am not.

            I don't have time to run the numbers, but the numbers I already stated are for a full third of the population, but the number goes up considering that there is a large number of people for whom 2001 would constitute either their very first memories, some of their earliest memories, or a part of their childhood. Unless you're idk 10, memories from your childhood are certainly seen as being from a different time.

            In 2001 DeviantArt was just beginning to gain users. Wikipedia was just launched. We just upgraded to IE 6 and visitted YTMND. Friendster and Meetup did not exist. AWS wouldn't exist until next year. Firefox, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, Orkut, Flickr, Gmail, Digg, Reddit, Vimeo...Hell, Club Penguin was still in our future.

            We were still doing cultural damage control on the Y2K bug. The Motorola RAZR, certainly a socio-historical landmark, wouldn't exist for another 3 years. The very first iPod wasn't released until the end of the year.

            I really don't think you could find a single person that can not see that the web of '01 was an objectively demonstrably different thing as compared to the web of '26. In rereading the original comment, I can see perhaps that the argument is that perhaps '01 is not "the early internet" given that by '01 the "bubble had popped", but that's kind of silly given that "early" does not in anyway mean "original". Like the "early bronze age" doesn't mean "the first time someone forged bronze". The same will be said of '26 in '46 when talking about the "early LLM days".

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.