Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer culture” I have seen

Re:Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer ... by prometheus76 on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @10:33AM (#37223325)

Her quote reminds me of Eternal September[1], when AOL started allowing their users to interact with Usenet. The people who were already there were not happy with this influx of the unwashed masses coming in and breaking stuff and ignoring good manners and the protocols that had been established.

In the early days of the internet, there was definitely a different crowd because the barrier to entry was pretty high and required a lot of dedication and problem-solving abilities. As the bar of entry came down, along with it came all of the things that come with football stadiums, shopping malls, and time-share condos.

A more recent, similar event was when Digg shut down and all the users from there flooded onto Reddit. That was the beginning of the end of the golden days of Reddit, imo.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

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Re:Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer ... by dleeftink on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @12:22PM (#37224965)

Unfortunate as it may be, we would be remiss to accept Digg's 2010 exodus as recent, especially in internet years. At the same time, I'd be interested to compare and see what is currently purported to be the 'golden age' and what it ends up being.

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Re:Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer ... by sixstringtheory on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @01:29PM (#37225967)

> we would be remiss to accept Digg's 2010 exodus as recent, especially in internet years

Why?

> what is currently purported to be the 'golden age'

My guess is that we’re on it right now.

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Re:Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer ... by dleeftink on Wednesday August 23, 2023 @01:29AM (#37232196)

I suppose it's semantics and concerns ones perception of time, but there's also general the pattern of collective memory decay, attention shifts and link rot, onsetting shortly depending on the cultural event or phenomenon of interest.

Once something is past this 'recency' window, we may want to start looking into additional examples more reflective of current times. That is not to say the Digg exodus is an insignificant event, but that there have been a fair few exodi since--StackExchange, Twitter's infosec sphere, streamers between YouTube/Twitch, Snap/Tiktok, failed SVOD services.

HN might be one of the lucky few around.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0474-5

[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447690/link-rot-researc...

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Re:Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer ... by Baeocystin on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @04:26PM (#37228095)

And I fully admit I miss the culture of the times, too. We all knew it was destined to be limnal, but it still hurt to see it succumb.

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