Fsck Yahoo! ☀
So Yahoo, cowards that they are, announced in the most quiet and subtle manner possible that they were shutting down Geocities, the nearly 20-years-old hosting service and site that has been home to untold millions over the years.
Soon, we will gaze back upon the “dawn of the internet” age (and it won’t be known as the “internet age” just as the Gilded Age moniker denotes the “Railroads” age — perhaps it will be known as the “Branded Age”) with nostalgic wonderment. A time when mankind possibilities appeared to be endless, an intellectual revolution in knowledge sharing and the genesis of a remarkable transformation in egalitarian educational enlightenment.
See, now we’re entering a new age. One where the web is as familiar as color television and microwaves. An era of celebrity blogs, where said celebrity may not ever even touch a keyboard, but is armed with a staff that dutifully pens missives in said celebrity’s name. A time when all the innovative web ventures are swallowed up by corporate giants mainly focused on constructing cash cows. Where discovering and sharing is supplanted by a flood of social marketing spam.
A great deal is bantered about the “digital divide”, the seismic rift between internet savvy folk and those who dwell in the darkness, too poor to afford or too intimidated to learn. But what about the divide between us awed by the early internet experience and the wonderment over how anyone could publish a piece and conceivably share with a global audience with new generations who blissfully regard the medium as just another commercial media channel offering, where the content creators are “professionals” and the bulk of the audience never departs from “read only” mode. Even amongst my generation, a great chasm exists, between internet pioneers who revere in those early exploits vs. those who shunned it as nerdish gleanings but only grew net conversant when online video and television became prevalent.
Even at this juncture, it might seem that I am guilty of exaggeration, engaged in overkill and issuing false alarms for an issue that just isn’t. But the historical onset of other media followed a similar trajectory — radio, for one, began in egalitarian fashion and the now natural model of corporate-owned, advertising-supported broadcasting was an alien concept until lobbyist PR established it as a dominant pattern.
