Everything Old is New Again

Here are some signs we’re back in the late ’90s and early ’00s model of the web:

1. Search engines suck again. No link needed because you know exactly what I mean.
2. Social media is fragmented and broken
3. People and institutions are moving from platforms back to websites (like this one! 😀)
4. Companies are leaving the cloud and moving back to machines they own
5. Microsoft is bloating Windows with garbage and ads (and also, have you seen how bad Microsoft-owned sites like LinkedIn work on Firefox? Ugh!)
6. Apple is chasing pipe dreams and developing a large and unwieldy portfolio of products

These are not strictly web-related, but I’ll throw it here as items (7) and (8).

(7). Physical media of every type remains very much alive

(8). Streaming services are cannibalizing their own content–and therefore the very reason they were attractive to users over physical media and broadcast in the first place–for short-term gains

In my own practice, I’m moving away from cloud file storage and streaming media back to owning and controlling my own data. I am canceling every subscription service I can, and I even bought an old mp3 player to control my own music again (in addition to all of the glorious physical media I could never part with in the first place).

I’ve been cooking a post on “free” computing for a little while now, but not tonight.