The problem with the tech incubators and hackathons and so forth of today is that it's only tangentially about having fun.

Back then it was 90% fun and maybe a few random guys were trying to figure out how to start some sort of tech business. It was mostly hobbyists just screwing around. That sense of play and screwing around is what made it so magical.

The last time I felt that kind of magic was when I attended an event called BIOcurious (Note the 'O' in previous word) where they showed complete novices how to use a minION device to sequence DNA with pipettes and reagents. It's the kind of thing that you need to be physically present for. The tech is not easy, but crazy powerful. With biotech gear getting cheap enough to be prosumer, maybe there will be that kind of extreme hobbyist thing forming around biotech? In a similar way, in the 80s computers went from things only big companies could afford to prosumer and even consumer devices and so all these people were getting involved just to see what they could do with these new magical devices.

Was it in SF? I was there with a very derpy bioprinter that was basically a Solidoodle 2 or 3 with peristaltic pumps instead of an extruder :)

Maybe it was Counter Culture Lab in Oakland, which is a maker space with a focus on microbiology.

i think this is exactly it. the internet of old was mostly hobbiests. even the early blogs were mostly hobbiests whi just wanted to share their info and didn’t care at all whether it made them money.

the profit motive creeping in changes the dynamic completely. btw i think this seems to happen with everything, i don’t think it’s limited to just technology—it happens with anything that transforms from fun hobby. this always seems to sap the energy from many of the most passionate.

This is something ive been thinking for a long time. It always annoys me when people say stuff like "content creators wouldn't exist without ad revenue" like dude no it would be different for sure, much less polished but less bland, people would absolubtely still make stuff for fun & to be cool not to make money. Theres a reason the culture of the internet today is still so influenced by stuff like newgrounds, because that kind of expression for its own sake is where creativity thrives

I agree. The comment section is a wealth of knowledge and people don't get any type of revenue except "karma," and last I checked, I couldn't buy anything with it.

* * *

We have a local hackerspace that regularly holds gamedev meetings and once or twice a year holds a weekend long Gamejam.

I love those because it's 2 days of challenging yourself to actually finish your project and do something crazy if you like. These constraints make it fun.

Our regular meetings are a good mix of hobbiests, professionals and the very occasional idea guy to allow great discussions and feelings of community.

Obviously there is no corporate sponsor and no prices besides the appreciation of your fellow hackers.

I also participated in "local government" sponsored Hackathon and while those are nice to meet people and encourage the bueocracy to embrace the modern world it's almost always about some social goal like accessibility, open data etc. These are important and interesting topics but the projects are never that "fun".

The last time I felt that magic was the BarCamp scene. People would give presentations on whatever they wanted, and it ran more on the fun side of things than the useful knowledge side. But even that was almost 15 years ago now.

You can't bring it back because it exists only in the memories of your youth. That spirit is created in the minds of many young people at this moment and in 20 years they will ask the same question (bring back the spirit of bitcoins, 4chan, Reddit, or whatever).

the spirit of 4chan - I like the sound of it :D

No, there is something decisively different about today's internet. I'm not from that time, having been born after the turn of the millennium, but I also feel a sense of excitement when I read these things from the past. This spirit is not present in today's corporatized, sterile internet. Everyone is trying to build a business on the internet now, so much so that there is no place left for fun anymore.

You might find these perspectives interesting:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27495517

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26mkK7s--I0 — the unexpectedly sincere description of which. Excerpt:

[...]

(retvrn to Konata)

Hey if I’ve been pretending it’s 2011 for the last decade so can you.

(le verboten maymay arrow)you will never watch “Haruhi Suzumiya Episode 1- Part 1” for the first time ever again

Or were you more indie, and instead hit up “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya English Dub Episode 1 [1/3]”?

God what I’d do for my exact watch history from 10 years ago…

I think I jotted down the date and time, down to the morning I discovered Miku, at least I have that…

Miku lead to MMD (tutorials), which lead to Caramelldansen (heh), the top results after searching that were Haruhi (naturally), and then some time later I was led back to Haruhi. What good times…

.

I think the most profound think I’ve realised in life, after endlessly trying to recapture so many emotions, is that it’s not just a matter of being in the same place, with the same devices, watching the same media, at the same time of day, during the same season, it still won’t be the same.

Even with the same old friend group, it’ll be different, because not only are they all different people to who they were at the time, so are you.

You can never be that person again, and you can never experience it the same way again. That’s why nostalgia’s such a blessing, you can still feel things the same way, not by experiencing it again, but simply by remembering it.

I was talking to a friend, they said they got really into LOTR when they were in their late teens, read all the books cover to cover, absolutely loved them, and that they know damn well they’ll never read them again.

I think they understood the same thing.

Truth be told I think I’ve only watched all of Haruhi through three times, Yuki-chan maybe twice, Disappearance twice, and Lucky Star once, and those viewings of Haruhi have been spread pretty evenly over the last decade, I’m not sure I’ll watch them again for a while.

But I know I will watch them again.

Preferably from the rooftop of an apartment complex in Nishinomiya…

Thanks! The first link is a deeply profound description of the feelings.

I grew up with the 90's internet. I was a young teenager when I first got online back in 1991 or so. Part of it is looking at those days through rose colored glasses. The other part is that as the internet become commercially viable, enough to go mainstream, the "spirit" simply got diluted as more and more people came online. Most of the users of the early Internet were academics, hackers, nerds, and various weirdos. Today, it's everyday people. There's still plenty of weird stuff out there, it's just a much smaller percentage of the content.

Find your local Hackspace, it’s probably populated by the same sort of people, building things for the love of doing something fun and interesting. (Unfortunately it’ll also be populated by the sort of antagonistic nerds you’d quietly leave a bar to avoid, but that was the case back in the 90s as well)