It's 22 years later. The presentation is infinitely better. The content is infinitely worse... or at least the content that greets the average net user.
You really have to dig for good quality content today.
You really have to dig for good quality content today.
As to the content, there's the good and the bad.
First, the bad: I feel like the websites on the Internet of yore were akin to the counter-cultural zines of the pre-digital era. They were made by passionate, creative, intelligent individuals and consumed by the same. Modern websites are more like mainstream magazine-tabloids: a strange blend of glossy, clickbaity journalism that prioritize going viral - or, at the least, being provocative - over everything. E.g., even as a liberal, I find myself groaning whenever I read slate.com.
The good is that there are places like HN, through which we can find thousands of high-quality sites - many of them created by individuals like the creators of those old school zines. (There are also places like reddit, which foster all types of communities, but I'm a bit conflicted on that website.) Anyway, if anything, the good content is out there, we just need places like HN to help us find it!
Edit: it really did feel like we were on the verge of the future, but the rise of communications technologies has hobbled all of us, and Idiocracy may be the only future that's possible if we don't slow the ocean currents to a halt first.
But don't forget that there was less content, and soon the era of blogs rose, for which I read a fascinating description lately:
"Everyone said too much and said it poorly. It was incredibly entertaining." / http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/05/i-dont-know-how-to-waste-... /