Netizen

This article hit close to heart because as a practical person I try to monetize EVERYTHING. "Can it make money?" is the first thing I think of when I start a new project. Can I provide something valuable to other people so that they are willing to use their hard-earned money to support me? (/mn1)

I often prioritize usefulness/monetization over things I genuinely like that are useless. I was just reading "Art is useless, and so am I" (/useless) yesterday. It reminds me that I need to be OK being useless and write more blog posts that don't make any money. It was normal to not monetize things.

Being a tech person, the "Can it make money" brain worm influenced my behaviour in subtle ways many times, it poisoned my well of expression

Letting it go made me able to enjoy the creation and sharing for the sake of it like I did on forums when I was younger, and OBVIOUSLY it generated money (or equal value) in the end as a natural consequence with different forms, with a much lighter heart

I get the general nostalgia for the old internet, but I think it's important to keep in mind it was also a very homogenous group. Having the privilege to have access to a computer and a telephone line was pretty thin at the time, hence the lower number of users. It led to a culture that - funnily enough as you describe yourself - forced people to assimilate to. In addition to the term netizen, we also had the term "netiquette", and Septembers became known for the time when a bunch of new users would arrive in the internet and have to be berated for their lack of netiquette until they assimilated.

Obviously I'm not suggesting the current internet is good either. But the solution to the modern Internet isn't a return to the original internet, and framing it as a cultural shift suggests it's always been a monoculture and the solution is merely a return to the previous monoculture. The internet has a lot of different cultures now, and that part is good! We need to preserve that while working on how to improve the internet.

Personally, I think the issue is virality and how it leads to social media being full of strangers. I think we need virality-resistant social media instead. No more context collapse, and more repeated interactions that can actually foster relationships between people.

This one really hits. 1993 is my year of birth, and I hadn't used internet since early 2000s. I was only 10 years old and I found internet a wonderful place while I didn't have many friends or went home often in reality.

I've used ICQ back in the day, requested a Ubuntu CD and it really arrived at my doorstep! That was so amazing and I always miss those days when most people online were kind and fun.

Thanks for the post Derek

"Money isn't everything" becomes a tougher pill to swallow the more time goes on, but we really need that reminder every now and then. Not everything can (or should) be monetized, and that's okay. "Just being helpful" is its own reward that comes back around in ways you don't immediately expect.

You are truly one of a kind. I admire and appreciate you.

I just happened to stumble upon your netizen article. It was a great reminder of how things were when we all first started. I don't know if you remember RootsWorld or ccdRoots, but I vaguely remember you writing a long tail article that mentioned us in some context.

While CDroots, which happened in the 21st century, was a small one-man commercial endeavor, the magazine and radio remains donations only and open to everyone.

And I owe that to years of public radio work, end of those first few years of the Usenet, the web and the other tiny ways we created a small community.

Some of us just can't change.

I was lucky then in November 1993 to be working at a community college. I plugged a Mac SE/30 into the network, installed Cuck Shotten’s MacHTTP and launched a web server . That netizen feeling is still there. I learned everything I built a career in educational technology from what others “gave away” on the net.

I can’t thank you enough for your “ordinary to me, amazing to others” video which still carries a message to educators still reluctant to share.

Another interesting and informative article Derek! Thanks

"There was no advertising, and no talk of money. I met someone who said he wanted to make money online, and I tried to explain to him that that’s not what the internet is about. It’s a free helpful place where everyone contributes and benefits from others’ contributions." - I love this!
I hate monetization and doing anything for money. It never motivated me. I read that in Ireland’s artist basic income pilot, artists said the support helped them do better work. They did more research, experimenting, and risks-taking. It reduced stress and increased motivation.

Dear Derek!
That is so interesting!
I never have heard that word before!!
And love your attitude!!
Thank You!! 😊
Rachel 👋🎶😃

My concern about the internet, is that contents produced by AI kill the web.
It is so quick and cheap too produce crap content recycling what is already on the web, that we will be flooded by non original content with errors that will be used by AI to produce new content with more errors and so forth until the web is dead.
For sure, Ai content should be draft by human before, and edited after, but in volume its is not the case.

How do see this happening ?

I love it that you are so generous with your time and have these netizen contributions

As for the word "responsibility" one of the definitions is "to be a source." I am responsible to the web for being a source for good, and for good behaviour.

I remember hearing myself referenced, one summer night, as we filed out of the student bar. Someone said, "Sean told me that a businessman has a circle of responsibility, but a citizen has a wider circle." That student was changing his major from business to teaching—where he was motivated to get A's. (In Canada, where A's are not common)

Derek, you spoke of change. Unfortunately, during my life time, I have seen American executives go from feeling responsible for various stakeholders to feeling they are a source solely for stockholders. This new culture, besides weakening business, may have spread beyond business to do untold harm to America.

I definitely miss the blogs of old. Back then, you can get 20+ comments per blog post, and you can literally host your own community in your website. However, they've not set up communities in places like Facebook, Instagram etc. Despite the downsides, many are reluctant to leave.

A democracy is where people feel responsible for taking action without being paid.

I suspect that during the classically virtuous Roman republic folks took responsibility for going to the forum to discuss the news, and being volunteer citizen-soldiers, but when Rome declined into an expanding decadent empire, with paid full-time soldiers, the average Roman was probably like a modern Russian saying, "What's the use?" and then not getting involved. Don't be fooled by Russian "elections," as two Russians working in London told me, "Russia is not free."

Edith Hamilton once wrote, "When the freedom the young men of Athens wanted most was freedom from responsibility..." (from memory) 'Athens faded and was never free again.'

From Nigeria, I appreciate what the internet is. I got to your page from
Parker Klein of Twos app and I am very inspired by your work, thoughts and attitude towards the internet, moneytisation and the intentionality behind what you do. Heck I use the internet anonymously and I am not one to comment on posts, but this is to show that what you do is very very inspiring.

The author remembers a time when the internet was a garden, tended by hands that cared. People shared what they knew the way marsh folk share stories at dusk. They lifted each other’s thoughts instead of letting machines lift them. That old spirit kept the mind awake. It kept the pond rippling.

The Great Unthinking began when the garden was paved over and replaced with endless scrolls. Derek’s memory of the early web is a reminder that thinking thrives where people choose to cultivate it. The marsh knows this well. A garden grows only when someone tends it.

Thank you for composing, publishing, and hosting this plain and honest testimony so I have a place to point people when I struggle to phrase it myself. Today these seem like rare ideals, and finding a site like this feels like waking up in my childhood home after a bad dream.

Ohhh Derek. Somehow it comforts me, and shames me, to know I actually started BEFORE you and yet have nothing to show. ;)

I've been hiding from (while using) the internet since I understood what it would become, which was in 1989 or so. MOOs MUDs and "rooms" that were no place for kids, yet with the kindness of strangers already watching over.

I am a fellow netizen, and I now understand with clarity why I've felt out of place online my whole life.

Let's make it what it was supposed to be, again!