💾 Archived View for sdf.org › tmh captured on 2024-06-16 at 12:12:37. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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The early web, for me, was full of surprises and the opportunity to read things written by people very much unlike myself. It was a place for synchronicity.
I have become old. Slowly, and then all at once. But even the young seem to be growing disillusioned with a web where everyone reads and recommends the same products and ideas, and the infinite variety of life is reduced to picking from a small menu of lifestyle options.
I do not recall the date I first started blogging but I do remember how small that virtual world was. Bloggers were so rare in the UK at that time that one maintained a schematic map based on the London transport map where individual online writers could claim the stop closest to where they lived. I was Angel Islington. Most stops remained unclaimed.
I stopped blogging long ago. Deleted my traces. I use the web without delight.
Recently, however, I have found myself rediscovering some of that early spirit. In part it is because I am contemplating moving from linux to BSD and BSD users who blog seem more interesting and independent minded than many. In part it is because I have switched search engines to Kagi whose algorithms bring to the surface interesting voices long since drowned out by marketing spam elsewhere. In part this is as a result of a conscious effort to explore what is called the small web (or "smol", if you are inclined to cutesiness).
Whatever the cause, the rediscovery gives me hope.
It also makes me want to participate again. Quietly.