I would really like to hear from people who are not web developers or creating software and firmware. I believe the experience for the large mass of humanity is so much less than the potential it had back in the day. Yes AOL existed but it truly was the low end of the scale. It’s not like there was people who did web development software and firmware and then everybody else was on AOL. However, it is a lot like that now. The people who are smart who are savvy who can find what they’re looking for in spite of the barriers put up to finding that still enjoy the freedom and the cheap plentiful access that they’re looking for. But you have to be able to get to it using command line level language and most ordinary users don’t have anything like geocities to allow them to produce a website about their model trains.
It’s indeed a utopia for the technically savvy. And that’s it.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Right, but I wasn’t talking so much about my own experience, rather my experience with other people during that time, because I was tech support for literally everyone I knew, so I knew what they all thought. Because they told me.
AOL was what most nontechnical people had during that time. There’s a reason for those AOL disc memes. It’s made fun of a lot, but that was how the internet became mainstream. They mailed them to everyone and their grandma, and their success was it was FREE** and the discs installed and configured everything for you: the browser. The ISP settings, and even their home page. You stuck the disc into your cup holder, and it gave you a friendly icon on your desktop to click to access The World Wide Web™ (or AOL’s private version of it – most people didn’t know better).
It wasn’t just the discs – if you bought your computer from the furniture store it came set up that way. Non-tech people just clicked that icon and didn’t know any better. Keep in mind that accessing the real internet was difficult and required a lot of knowledge many people neither had nor wanted at the time. The computer was for spreadsheets and solitaire, and it was a very expensive luxury.
I doubt you’ll get the response you’re looking for, because the people you’re talking about are the same people you’re decrying today. I’m saying that idealised demographic didn’t really exist, and I’m not speculating about them. I was embedded deeply in a world of those people. I remember them very clearly.
I strongly believe you’re seeing them through a heavy fog of nostalgia.
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Good answer, but I disagree.
However, I’m willing to admit my memory isn’t perfect and perhaps I’m wrong and things were exactly as you said they were.