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Comment by benrutter | Hacker News Reader

> Yet at least in my social circle, I don't really hear anyone pining for an 'artisan internet'.

It definitely is a thing at least, to pine for the "small web" [0].

I think as well, dissatisfaction with major social networks is pretty widespread, I don't know how often it comes.alongside a pining for something more "artisinal" though.

[0] https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

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People pining for the small web are a narrow elite in modern society. They are generally people who frequently use a desktop computer and enjoy reading (and writing) longform text. Most internet users today use a phone for accessing the internet, a platform which tends to discourage the writing of longform text and even the reading thereof. This is why image and video platforms are so popular now, as you can see from people's internet use in public places. And even a text-based site like Reddit has seen comment lengths decline drastically from substantial paragraphs to 180-character quips.

Based on what I’ve seen, most people use their phones (computer is mostly a work thing) as an entertainment device (like a tv) or to communicate with friends (chat and call). The other roles are to be a camera, a music player, a flashlight, and a game console. They only do computing for work and rarely interact with the web (as in hyperlinked documents) for personal reasons. There’s literally no reason to pine for a small web.

I think of ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing Network at the MIT-AI Lab) as the first social network.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31807854

Artisnal means "the algorithm" and "chat" is written in PDP-10 assembly language and MACLISP, and the "editor" and "messenger" is written in TECO.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35759887

Then there was Jordan Hubbard's infamous "rwall incident" of March 31, 1987.

It was waaaay more than just reported to the local sysadmin, and almost got UCB kicked off the ARPANET.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35759965

Keith Lynch documented why "History of the Net is Important":

https://keithlynch.net/history.net.html

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