A forum for my car just went dark. Gone are not quite 20 years of posts and discussions that I've searched many times over while troubleshooting mine or in preparation for some job that needed to be done.
I made this discovery after going to post a novel solution for getting into the hood with a seized hood release in hopes that it might spare someone else some trouble in the future.
All things are not in the moment. Sometimes it's good to learn from the past.
It makes me wish for forums where posts and comments are automatically synced and cached locally. Then everyone has a copy in case it closes down, and someone could use the content to bootstrap a replacement.
Note, that isn't the same as an ambitious fully federated mesh network or anything, but being limited in certain ways makes it efficient and easier in others.
The current moment is great if you never need to find an old book, fix an old car, fix an old house, identify an old variety of plant, or any of a thousand other things. Basically, if you have no other interests, responsibilities, or desires other than fads, like a child. That's fine. Otherwise, there are decades of useful experience of large groups of human out there to be mined. It can often save you thousands of dollars, but then again, that's something only a grown-up cares about.
Funnily, the walled garden often gives people the impression that it is not walled but in fact infinite. I‘m always shocked at how many people don‘t realize how little information is accessible on the internet anymore. Yes, as soon as you need something that isn‘t faddish/of the immediate current moment (especially if you‘re not trying to buy something), the internet fails. There is so much useful info that is extremely difficult to find online these days.
> I‘m always shocked at how many people don‘t realize how little information is accessible on the internet anymore.
Any millennial or nerdy Xer with a good memory would tell you what the deal is. We were the first ones who came of age online, and saw what the Internet was like when it came to prominence. Now, our libraries, town halls, and weird gardens are all ash. Try to surf like you did in 2010 and all you'll see is spam; the filters work in reverse now. Log in to what "social media" is these days (after filling in your phone number and uploading your driver's license) and it's just cable TV with some extra widgets.
I think the point is that passively feeding your content to a profit engine actually limits your opportunities vs a modicum of agency over how you want to share your knowledge and experiences. If you honestly don't care about anything beyond your tiktok feed, that's fine, but there is interest out there in a longer time envelope of cultural production.
Sometimes. I stumbled across somebody’s 20+-year-old collection of deep musical analyses of early Chicago songs. That same material on Twitter/Facebook/Discord/whatever is going to be inaccessible.
I'd be interested in a link. Live At Carnegie Hall was my paper-writing music in college. I discovered later that I don't much care for it when I don't have anything else occupying my mind. I'm unsure if it's because there isn't really that much to the songs of if I'm missing some nuance and complexity that makes them worth another listen.
Ironic you post this because I just rediscovered a 20yo blog post that I remembered reading, re-read it again and found it very motivating and inspiring and submitted it.
