new internet

In the early days of the internet, one of the first search engines, Yahoo!, hired “surfers,” people with particularly niche interests, to record and catalog new websites by hand. In those days, each site was crafted by hand by a person. Each site had a face you could see, and if desired, email.

Back in the 2000s, a lot of blogs were about blogs , about blogging. If that sounds exhaust­ingly meta, well, yes — but it was also SUPER generative. When the thing can describe itself, when it becomes the natural place to discuss and debate itself, I am telling you: some flywheel gets spinning, and powerful things start to happen.

The internet really w as better, back before it turned into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four.”