Цитата з Usenet:

I feel social networks and blogs risk monopolisation and censorship, force conformity, use unnecessary resources, require too fancy software, and fragment users. Usenet in the 1990s united the world. I was at an event discussing crowdsourcing for science and folks lamented the demise of usenet.

I'd like to see a reader both online (accessible by lynx browser) and as an app that looks and feels like a social network. It should most of all notify you when somone replies to your posts and when your friends post. It should let you rank (1-10) how important posts are and so decide what to show you first. I had a celfon in 1990-2009. Dumped it. I really get annoyed when they ask me for a celfon or to update my browser.

I think MS Outlook's downloading a use list of groups crippled usenet, and Google has not maintained the deja news franchise (some stuff seems to have disappeared). Also they did not maintain the hierarchy, which would have better followed academic departments.

I also think the moderator fanaticism was crippling. You can use kill files instead of depend on the whim of others. We should allow individuals to control what they view, not others.

One special peeve is, since I work in fields where brainstorming is important, I would crosspost to groups I wanted to bring together. But the narrow minded would complain they didn't want to hear it. I've actually seen a strong enough current of support for crossposting (now disabled by google groups, BTW) on the grounds it was more efficient than multiple posts to multiple groups.

I really do think the internet of the 1990s was freer. Too many search engines try to control what you see. They even disable booleans. Maybe they do it to try to be helpful, maybe they are doing it to protect paying customers, I can't tell. I have an analogy in Otmar Mergenthaler's linotype leading ot an explosion of press freedom and hence democracies (in places like Iran, Russia, Germany) in the late 1800s. Of course we know what happened, govt learned to control the press. Well, look around, same with internet - maybe not here, but most places.

Remember the orig net was peer-to-peer. Now everyone seems to be logged in from a server farm in Texas. So where's the "inter" in internet?