From the Wild West to Portlandia

The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

Not intending to get into deep sociological analysis here. Like most things I write on this blog, this is reactionary and typed up in five minutes or less.

But I miss the old web. Before social networks and the vast invasion of the stupid people and the corporate conquest and subjugation. It really was a bit of a weeder when it was more difficult to do anything useful.

People are content to give away their life and their freedom for 10% off at Outback. I will never, ever understand this. Fuck those people and everything they stand for, everything they are. We have no common ground at all.

At least I got to live through the wild west of BBSes and the early web, and to feel that promise even if at the time I recognized it as probably false.

Humans are like any other animal: their own doom and their own nemesis. Why would we be immune from any natural laws that govern other creatures? We are not. We’re just acting out an old, old play on a larger stage.

History, prove me wrong. But is so very rarely does.