With respect to the implementations of these "services", things were actually better back in the day. That's because users were generally more responsible (because you had to take an interest in how the network worked in order to use it) and there was no NAT. Peer to peer connections were the norm.
By comparison, todays "web" (which people confuse with the internet), is crippled, functionally.
So all of these "services" use ugly hacks. Like trying to stay in touch with people you know through some sociopathic stranger's website. As if that was "connectivity". Or trying to run programs through a "web browser".
NAT forced people to use the web, and forget about the internet.
The future lies in moving beyond NAT, and beyond a port 80, web browser-centric model of what people call "the internet" (which is actually just the crippled web).
We will never get the full functionality of the internet through only "the web".
NAT vs P2P is small fry. What really bothers me is the death of ATM at the hands of IP. A protocol which had a much better design, addressing present future and futuristic use cases dies at the hand of a protocol that had the marketing musclepower of cisco.
"ATM became popular with telephone companies and many computer makers in the 1990s. However, even by the end of the decade, the better price/performance of Internet Protocol-based products was competing with ATM technology for integrating real-time and bursty network traffic."
It's sort of been worked around already anyway. I see two Android phones connect directly all the time nowadays when running various software. There are whole libraries and STUN servers designed for the correct hole punching procedures, which work most of the time. Some apps don't even have the code path written for piping all the video call data or whatever they are usually sending directly through a server anymore. If they can't go direct, they just don't support users on that network.
Isn't there something to be said for the standard port 80 website that the average person can use with their built in web browser without the need to install custom apps? I'd rather see everyone using a "sociopathic person's website" to stay in touch than see a fragmented environment in which some people use one program to stay in touch on port X using one protocol while other people use port Y, while you don't like either but instead want to use port Z.
But that has nothing to do with the focus on the web to the exclusion of all else that is possible.
As someone said, TCP/IP became a standard, even though there were superior alternatives.
The benefits to us that you observe are in the adoption of a common standard, not in the choice of the protocol.
Client-server is standard. NAT is standard. Firewalls are standard. When everyone adeheres to standards, it's a good thing. But these choices are poor and do not benefit us as much as better alternatives would.
I worked on the PLATO system beginning in high school as a 15-year old through college. (The building where PLATO was located was diagonal south-west of my high school). David Woolley who is created Notes mentioned in the article was an undergraduate when he wrote Notes.
PLATO not only had social networking but was the genesis for other technologies. The orange screen in the article was invented at PLATO and was the genesis for the color plasma TV screen. In fact, Larry Webber, the or a key inventor of the color plasma TV screen was a post-doc in the lab. Ray Ozzie who took over from Bill Gates as Chief Software Architect at Microsoft was also there. The PLATO terminals had touch screens.
For software development, when there were compilation errors, you could press a single key and you were given an explanation of the error.
Also, the PLATO system has been resurrected. You can run a terminal emulator from your computer and log into the PLATO system and experience and use it much as it was used 40 years ago using a terminal emulator on this website:
Use of the notes program mentioned in the article starts in 1974.
As undergraduates some of us would get EE degrees while working our way through college programming computers. We were in this very fertile environment of both software and hardware and we got an enormous amount of autonomy.
One thing that Notes did better than modern threaded comment systems or web forums was that it had a sequencer that would allow you to quickly jump to and read whatever new responses and/or notes that were created since the last time you read Notes.
I never used Notes on Plato, but it was faithfully recreated on The Evergreen State College's timeshared BASIC system running on an HP3000, and then again to an AOS/VS based DG Eclipse MV10000 system. My best friends today are all people I met on Notes in the 80s. In high school my pal and I spent a summer vacation coding a Notes-like system (including sequencer) for a NewDos/80 GREENEMACHINE BBS. Good times.
I feel lucky to have spent time in the 80s learning about Plato (ok, mostly EMPIRE) on aging dusty terminals in the back of TESC's terminal room. Glad to see that you can still interact with it via cyber1.org. Can't wait for my account to get created.
> Both papers illustrate a paradox which may be seen in many "people's computing" groups. While attempting to bring the computer into useful daily interaction with a variety of citizens for a variety of applications, such groups often unwittingly reinforce myths about computers which, as Berk notes, are a primary obstacle to social acceptance of the technology as a tool for society
This is fascinating. The question that immediately springs to my mind is this: can I look at the crappy failed projects of today, pinpoint the missing technology, and send a note to myself in the future to re-attempt building it when that technology exists? If so, I'd be competitive with the iPad, iPhone, etc.
Yes, you can do that, sending notes into the future is trivial.
Of course, you have to get the timing just right, which is the real trick. Being early, as they say, is virtually the same thing as being wrong.
Also, you have to hope the patent situation is improved prior to your product introduction, because it is already neigh impossible to create a new product that isn't unknowingly violating dozens to hundreds of patents, which (given the purpose patents are supposed to serve) is ridiculous.
I dislike "this new thing is just that old thing" analogies. Someone on HN once tried to argue with me that the old unix talk utility was no different from Twitter.
Just because it's a computerized container for human communication doesn't mean it's the same idea. I mean, when you get down to it, it's all strings.
Pretty unrelated to the article but does it annoy anyone else when you click a link on HN then can't hit the back button without being redirected back to the page you were linked to?
Social media is nothing new. It just has better packaging -- and better marketing.
This is dumb.
There is a time factor in the evolution and acceptance of an idea that must always be taken into account.
And comparing today's tech to yesterday's? Metaphorically, that's ok but if you really do believe a car is just an improved bicycle (or an ipad is a useless laptop), you're doing yourself a huge disservice.
Note that imode stuff, while still alive, is a blast from the past, but Japanese phone makers are still ahead of the curve in terms of hardware features and hardware integrated services (specially NFC, which exists in a really daily usable form)
My first experiences in serious computing were on multiuser VMS, AIX and Red Hat systems. I really miss the camaraderie and interactive features of those setups.
Strikes me that Web 2.0 is really about cloning that kind of functionality - more prettily, but as yet more clumsily - for a wider audience.
(Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard just about the time they were migrating from AIX-over-ssh to web for email, losing all that status and messaging functionality in the process. Essentially he cloned parts of it again in a new interface.)
"AIX-over-ssh to web for email, losing all that status and messaging functionality in the process."
what does that even mean? You mean using bash over ssh and checking email using elm et al? And what's all the status and messaging functionality that was lost?
web based email was available when Zuck was learning his ABCs...
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. That's what my college used in the late 90's/early 2000's, even though web mail had been available for a while, and I know Harvard did too. The lost functionality was mostly finger. Some people still used talk as well, although AIM/ICQ had mostly taken over that space.
Kids used to spend hours updating their .plan and .project files, finger'ing other people, etc. the same way they now spend hours messing around with Facebook and Twitter. That was lost with the move to web mail, and then social networks stepped in to fill the void.
The differences are mainly that a) the newer tools allow for richer media, not just text b) status updates are viewable in a timeline rather than being destructive overwrites, but c) they still aren't as well integrated imho as unix email/finger/talk.
1. Bandwidth 2. Hardware 3. Language ease of use
With respect to the implementations of these "services", things were actually better back in the day. That's because users were generally more responsible (because you had to take an interest in how the network worked in order to use it) and there was no NAT. Peer to peer connections were the norm.
By comparison, todays "web" (which people confuse with the internet), is crippled, functionally.
So all of these "services" use ugly hacks. Like trying to stay in touch with people you know through some sociopathic stranger's website. As if that was "connectivity". Or trying to run programs through a "web browser".
NAT forced people to use the web, and forget about the internet.
The future lies in moving beyond NAT, and beyond a port 80, web browser-centric model of what people call "the internet" (which is actually just the crippled web).
We will never get the full functionality of the internet through only "the web".