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Innocence Lost<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Most of us think back on the past as a simpler, less complicated time. When we let our thoughts drift back to our childhoods \u2013 no matter how old we are \u2013 most of us imagine a more beautiful world, a more peaceful time in our lives. I do not know if this is really so, but it seems to me that most of us look upon the past that way. Maybe the song \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d sums it up best:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s the laughter<\/span> Maybe some sort of filter in our heads that brandishes the painful moments, the less desirable moments, the bad and sad moments, the embarrassing moments and when filtered we are left believing the past is preferable to the present. And, I think that\u2019s a good thing. We have enough problems with today without having the ones from our pasts intermixing with the ones from now and making things worse. No thanks. Today\u2019s troubles are sufficient for today. So it\u2019s the laughter, we remember when we remember the way we were… and that\u2019s a good thing.<\/span><\/p>\n It seems to me that the Internet, which is a product of human endeavor, is a reflection of all that is good and all that is bad in all of us. I am not sure when I look back on the Internet twenty or so years ago if I\u2019m seeing the Internet as filtered through that wonderful nostalgic filter in my brain or if my memories of those days are accurate. <\/span><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s a bit of both.<\/span><\/p>\n When I first set eyes on the first Web site I ever saw (Yahoo) I didn\u2019t know what I was seeing. There was something called a \u201csearch engine\u201d but I didn\u2019t know what a search engine was. A friend of mine, who had been around the Internet a year before me, tried to explain it. He told me it was a search engine — but like a lot of things, you have to need something and use it to understand it. <\/span><\/p>\n And so it was with search engines. At first, it made no sense —\u00a0 why call it an engine? When my friend tried to explain it to me, I didn\u2019t understand why I would need one; this is kind of the same reason why I don\u2019t understand calculus \u2013 why do I need it?<\/span><\/p>\n As it turns out, I eventually needed to find something and that\u2019s when the light bulb went off in my mind. After that, my goal was to find the best search engine. I can remember writing to EB about every new search engine I found and I\u2019m sure she laughed when each was supposedly better than the one I had discovered the day before. <\/span><\/p>\n As it turned out,\u00a0 Yahoo was a terrible search engine\u00a0 \u2013 trying to find something yielded page after page of useless and irrelevant search results. I remember using Mamma and Dogpile and then finding Alta Vista. I crowned Alta Vista as the king of all search engines… that is until Google came along. I wonder if those search engines still exist?<\/span><\/p>\n For those of you who look at Google with a jaded eye – I can tell you — as a guy who came from the pre-Google era — Google was so much better than any other search engine in those days it\u2019s no wonder they were so successful. Google, in its infancy, provided a search engine where you could find what you were looking for on the first try. Google was almost everyone\u2019s search engine after the news about Google spread across the World Wide Web.<\/span><\/p>\n PUPs and malware were unknown. It was the age of sharing. Freeware sites offered freeware \u2013 free software with no gimmicks. There was a time when every day brought wonderful new freeware \u2013 and you can ask EB about this \u2013 I think I installed most of it\u2026or at least as much as a 540 MB hard drive would hold.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s right, back in 1995 and 1996 computers came with 540 megabyte \u2014 not gigabyte \u2013 hard drives; RAM was measured in kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes. Internet connections were all dial-up then. The screeching connection tone is something none of us who used dial-up will ever forget. And it wasn\u2019t likely you\u2019d ever connect on the first attempt. I used to get a lot of \u201cbusy\u201d signals.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s because the equipment was so primitive or the world was a better place, things were or seemed to be, more innocent, less hurried, and less ominous and less threatening then. If you were using the Internet in 1995, you were a \u201cgeek\u201d. If you told someone about something you saw on the Internet, you\u2019d have to also stop and explain the Internet. Now imagine how hard it would be to explain the Internet when only a handful of people knew what it was. Think about trying to explain ice to a primitive society in the Amazon.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, I can\u2019t go anywhere without seeing someone taking a selfie and sending it to someone or posting it somewhere on the Internet. The Internet is everywhere. Children and young adults now take it for granted. It\u2019s nothing special to them. I often see families sitting together at the same table in a restaurant with their eyes focused on their smartphones texting someone else – ignoring the other family members sitting at the table.\u00a0 Now we take the Internet for granted. People access the Internet with smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.<\/span><\/p>\n Once an arcane peculiarity, the Internet now is an essential thread in the fabric of life. If the Internet disappeared tomorrow, the world economy would collapse. Banks transfer checks and money over the Internet, credit cards are processed over the Internet \u2013 and we are all connected in some way by the Internet. Ane whether you believe it or not, it also affects those who have never used it. Today the Internet is a necessity; it is no longer a curiosity. Its novelty is gone. And its innocence is gone.<\/span><\/p>\n Today it is estimated that 30% to 40% of the Internet is pornography related. Is this because the Internet itself is a bad place? If no one wanted to see those kinds of things then there would be none at all. The Internet reflects humanity \u2013 both its good sides and its bad sides.<\/span><\/p>\n Today, almost all freeware should come with asterisks:<\/span><\/p>\n *Beware this installer contains malware and\/or pups<\/span><\/p>\n *Beware this site plays games with download links and buttons \u2013 be sure you guess the right link or button or you\u2019ll be installing malware and\/or PUPs on your computer.<\/span><\/p>\n *Beware some of the most trusted sites from the past, like CNet, are now the biggest distributors of malware and PUPs<\/span><\/p>\n The Internet grew up quickly and it is now a vast and deep ocean of money \u2013 whether gotten by honest means, or by picking your pocket by turning your computer into a billboard of ads and misdirected searches; or by collecting your personal data and selling it like a commodity. Money is everywhere on the Internet and it\u2019s the motivation for almost everything on the Internet. Even sites that freely give information or software are supported by ads or donations. There has never been such a thing as a free lunch and in this world, there never will be. The same is true for the Internet. There was a brief shining moment in the Internet’s infancy when free lunches were available to everyone. But that was two decades ago. The world and the Internet have changed.<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe the old days were so good as I remember them, I\u2019m sure some could argue that they were not. But I think they were \u2013 it makes me nostalgic to think about those days on the Internet just like it does when I think about the days of my childhood. I\u2019m sure neither were as good or as innocent as they seem.<\/span><\/p>\n One thing I\u2019m sure of though- it makes me feel good to remember things the way they were.<\/span><\/p>\n How about you?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Innocence Lost Most of us think back on the past as a simpler, less complicated time. When we let our thoughts drift back to our childhoods \u2013 no matter how old we are \u2013 most of us imagine a more beautiful world, a more peaceful time in our lives. I do not know if this is\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,1433],"tags":[1720,3532],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17780,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17779\/revisions\/17780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe will remember,<\/span>
\nWhenever we remember,<\/span>
\nThe way were were\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n