Ctrl ZINE: The web, and all its small things
Hello and welcome back! Here we have Issue. 3 of ^Z - the only zine you’ll need to read today!
Within, art of ~gtlsgamr (including that slick cover image!), as well as their poetry. Also, vibes and history from Noisy Deadlines, vibes and history from ~basilmori, and your unyielding sense of joy and pride that you are supporting a Smol indie publication on the Web - by and for all.
I’m your curator/compiler ~loghead. Let’s get started!
Index
- Rediscovering the Old Internet Vibe
- Teacups
- 100 Years After the Golden Age of Radios
- Art of ~gtlsgamr
Contributors: Noisy Deadlines, ~gtlsgamr, ~basilmori
Rediscovering the Old Internet Vibe
by Noisy Deadlines
The Internet is awesome because it connects computers, which can then connect people. This allows people to share information and work and have fun together. In the past, there were different ways that this connection happened, such as bulletin board systems (BBS's), Usenet networks, forums, message boards, and IRC. Some of these systems are still around today, but they are not as popular as they used to be.
We all know blogs have been around for a while, starting as online journals in 1994. They evolved over time, becoming more social with features like comments and likes. Webrings were also used to find personal blogs, and people would share other blogs on their own through Blogrolls. The experience of finding cool blogs was decentralized and based on serendipity.
When I think of the early internet, I remember forums, IRC chats, and personal blogs. These were the “social networks” of that time. They were all about connecting with people, sharing passions and opinions, having conversations, and learning from each other. Forums were especially useful for finding expert advice and detailed guides on many topics.
Blogs became more popular in the 2000s and reached more people. However, this also meant that they became part of the internet advertising economy, cluttered with ads, pop-ups, and annoying banners. Around the same time we saw the emergence (and eventual decline) of some networking platforms such as Six Degrees, Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, and Facebook. These services began as a means of connecting with groups of people who shared common interests, or were friends or relatives.
But something happened around 2009-2010 that turned “Social Networking” into “Social Media.” The advertising economy had taken hold. Ads were everywhere online. With the rise of smartphones and social media apps, billions of people began to view themselves as potential celebrities. Comments and likes created a social-validation feedback loop. This led to the influencer economy, where users got paid by companies to promote products.
Surveillance capitalism worsened the situation by harvesting user data for ads. Social media lured users with money for “content” but also hooked them with addictive features like endless feeds, “like” buttons, and click-bait algorithms. We all know the negative effects these apps have on users’ well-being. Mainstream social media platforms are now in a bad shape, and I believe people are aware of the problems and want change.
It appears that people have become accustomed to being in one crowded place all the time on the web, but this is not an ideal way to socialize. We can bring back some of the old Internet vibe by creating smaller, more manageable groups. The first step is to establish our own spaces on the web, which are separate from the large, walled social media gardens.
After using mainstream social media platforms for years, I realized that everything I wrote on these platforms didn’t really belong to me. My content and identity were owned by mega-corporations. Bothered by this, I read books by Jaron Lanier, Shoshana Zuboff and James Williams. To my relief, I discovered that there were alternatives to the “corporate-owned” Internet, including initiatives like the Indie Web, the smol web, the federated ActivityPub protocol and so many others.
I deleted my social media accounts. I got a domain and created my blog on Write.as, a privacy-focused blogging platform that is a delight to use. I am not pressured to write to keep up with the trending topics, or to grow my audience. It's my little corner on the internet, it's clean, and quiet. It's a safe space for me to express myself and connect with other on my own terms.
There are various ways to connect with people online, such as microblogging, chatting on IRC or joining the small web / IndieWeb movements. It's important to remember that the internet is a tool and we have the power to shape the way we use it. By taking control of our own data and creating our own spaces online, we can recreate the sense of community and personalisation that defined the early internet.
I think we all deserve to have choices that suit our technical skills and tastes. The decentralised web offers choices for everyone. You can pick and choose the platforms and protocols that work for you and your goals. And I hope that as more people discover the ad-free and decentralized web, they will find more options that are rewarding and fun to use.
Teacups
by ~gtlsgamr
We sit here
Alone, broken
Bashed into, forsaken.
An eternity we have longed
For the steam of kettle
To turn into a song
And the noisy waterfall
of a fiery hot drink
To Fill our leaking bases
Before we go extinct.
Instead, harsh rain fills us
Every few months or so
And we let it molest us
We have nowhere to go
But we will have our day
We ignore what the commode
And the broken cars say
After all they're trash
Their purpose long fulfilled
And we're broken teacups
in a junkyard
Waiting to be filled.
Regards,
~gtlsgamr
100 Years After the Golden Age of Radio
by ~basilmori
Throughout the centuries, humanity has always been defined by advances in communication. From couriers to coaches to trains, each one brought the horizon closer and closer to home. Every new milestone in speed and throughput connected more and more people together and made our effective communities bigger and bigger.
A century ago, in 1923, the world was just entering the golden age of radio. The technology had been tested, proven, and perfected, and now it was ready to be used by the average person from within their own homes. For the first time ever, anyone could listen to the voice of someone standing miles away almost instantly after the words were spoken without so much as picking up a handset. While the theatrophone allowed a single listener to enjoy the sounds of theatrical and operadic performances from afar, only thirty years after Compagnie du Théâtrophone opened its doors to the Paris streets the radio allowed an entire room to be filled with music for pennies on the dollar.
It's far from an exaggeration to say that the commercial success of the home radio changed everything. News and entertainment both entered the modern medium through the gateway of AM radio, and the legacy of the entertainment radio program is felt still every time someone opens a podcast.
Of course, other technologies would soon come to replace it. The golden age of the radio ended when television broadcasting stole away the public's attention. And just over fourty years from when radio first entered the home, almost a poetic mirror to the radio's conquest over the theatrophone, another development came into play. It called itself ARPANET.
Today, six decades after humanity began networking computers in earnest, the internet has continued to grow and expand. Just as our predecessors devised ways to transport more packages at once, we've developed technology, infrastructure, and algorithms designed to carry more data. And, far from a few computers in dedicated labs, the devices we connect to each other are all over the world and small enough to fit in our pockets.
We live in a golden age of computing. Tiny dedicated devices more powerful than the workstations of just ten years ago are being built purely for the sake of emulating games from twenty years ago. The modern cellphone is now more capable than the computer I learned to type on, even though it doesn't ask for that skill. We're creating machines that can, on some level, begin to simulate reality, And in another couple decades, all this will be as outdated as the computers from a couple decades ago are now.
It's overwhelming. The future is growing so bright that it's blinding, and that mirror-sheen of our present accomplishments has begun to reflect back at us the darkness that's always present in humanity's shadow. That's the price we have to pay for being so instantly and globally connected. In just a short century, we've created a tool which seems to be both the best and worst thing that's ever happened to us.
What we should remember in the face of all of this is that ham radio never stopped broadcasting.
The tools of the original internet are still here for us, carefully preserved and maintained by those who never stopped finding them useful, and anyone can pick them up and start learning. Find an old computer you no longer use, or buy one locally or from the internet. Install a lightweight version of Linux on it- the process is easy, and the right one will run just fine. Write a website using simple HTML, or one of the many alternative protocols, and host it from your home. Domain name optional. Join a tilde and learn how to navigate around a commandline. Most of all, relax and have fun.
The pioneers of our field kept this software free for a reason.
Art of ~gtlsgamr
And there we have it! Issue. 3 of ^Z! The gods, the dogs and blogs have blessed us once again! :) I hope everyone enjoyed reading this issue as much as the contributors enjoyed. . . contributing. Compiling ^Z is definitely a labor of love for me, and I will always do it!
Thank you for reading, downloading, sharing, and being a part of the Smol Web! Until later…
