I miss how slow everything was...

[miscellaneous_section]

For the few days I've been feeling nostalgic of the old Internet and 2000's tech. Where you can customize your computer's DE and exploring the web did feel like an adventure; with people's personalized webpages and crazy looking DE. Yeah, I miss the bubbly, shiny aesthetics of the 2000's. Cellphones were just phones with extra features that didn't eat up our attention like no one's business. It felt like the world was our oyster growing up. The Internet was the escape from daily life; where people created things because they wanted to share it with people online. But now, with the corporatization of the Internet for last 20 years or so, it's all so dull and samey. Making money is the main or only reason for making stuff, and nothing else. And, people are finding ways to leave the Internet and go back to daily life just to get away from the virtual nightmare we're all in. The technology is sleek and nice, but there's very little personality to them where it feels like it's yours. Just take a look at smartphones where they're over six inches in length, and they're just slabs of plastic and glass. Overall, it's depressing... So, what am I changing?

I've been filling that time with changing up my DE to be a little more exciting. I'm also browsing around Neocities and Newgrounds a little more; just something to make exploring the Internet a little more fun again. I've added more items with my flip phone to carry with like an old digital camera, notepad, and an iPod mini. It's tough when your brain is addicted with the Internet because that's where the music and videos I enjoy are at! Seriously, I got to stop picking up that tablet in the morning downstairs -I got better things to do with my time-. I'm using websites that are slower and way more chill than the mainstream ones like Pillowfort and Dreamwidth. I would try SpaceHey, since I never used MySpace before, but from what I read from one user (here) that it seems the user base is mostly 14 to 19 year olds. And y'know what? They deserve a space on the Internet to be themselves and it's properly moderated for that age demographic. That's a different topic to talk about some other time, but back on topic. Hell, I would like to learn some HTML or CSS coding to create a Neocities website just for the fun of it. I know a little bit of HTML for bold, italics, and creating paragraphs; and that's it. It gets a little overwhelming after awhile to remember this stuff.

Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. I'm impressed with how far tech has come to be more convenient and helpful. But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it. I'm used to not having a smartphone growing up (and it was probably for the best) since my family couldn't afford them. I got my first smartphone back in community college (about 2018 or something), and buying a new smartphone a couple of years back was eye opening! Just seeing how big it was was something. My hands are small, and my fingers can only stretch so much to tap something. If feature phones were just as common as they were in the 2000's I would use a QWERTY phone just like my old LG phone from Tracfone.


I know Unihertz has the Titans series of phones, but that would be more like a work phone at that point than a daily drive phone since it has Android on it.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> For the few days I've been feeling nostalgic of the old Internet and 2000's tech. <<

I feel that way all the time. Current technology is a very bad fit for me and rapidly growing worse. When things break, it is often impossible to replace them with something that will actually do the job.

>> Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. <<

Yeah, but we used to have less people, more birds-amphibians-and-insects, and less global warming. When I was little this area was Zone 5b, then 6a, and now it's on the border of 6b while 7 is blazing up the southern end of the state. Social interpretations are often opinions, but there are a lot of very concrete reasons why the world sucks more now than it used to. And the real killer? This is the least-worse it will ever be on a human timescale. It's just going to keep getting worse.

>> But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it.<<

I live near Amish territory. While we don't draw the line in the same places, I do use their rule: "Before adopting any new piece of technology, first determine whether it does more harm than good. If so, do not adopt it." So there are a ton of modern things that I either avoid or minimize using, because they're more trouble than they're worth. And if I need a backup tool for when the modern ones don't work -- like oil lamps or hand-powered kitchen equipment -- I can usually find it there.