The Old Internet

When it comes to purchasing things on the Internet, we're moving closer and closer to a reality where the consumer owns nothing and the corporations own everything. There's a phrase that many people aware of this issue will repeat: "You will own nothing and be happy." Essentially, the Internet is becoming more centralized. We rely on a handful of websites that offer similar services usually for free with minimal effort required by the end user. The Internet is meant to be a decentralized system, where users access disparate parts of the Internet instead of going to one singular source.

This website is a form of self-hosting. Instead of going to more common sites like Twitter or Reddit to post my thoughts, I created my own site. I have social media profiles, as you can see when you open the navigation menu, but I only use them to share links to my posts here. This is how the Internet was meant to be: no one entity controls where people go to find information. Back in the 2000s, there was a term called surfing the web. People don't surf the web anymore. Information is just served to users through an algorithm; there is no need to go out looking for new sites to visit because that is done for you.

That's not to say you can't surf the web anymore (at least not yet). Self-hosting is slowly becoming more popular, and as it does, there will be new sites to find and communities to join. There are certainly many cool websites you can visit, like this archive for keygen music. Websites like these, in my opinion, exemplify what the Internet is meant to be: small, focused websites that offer interesting services for people to utilize for free. When we live in a decentralized Internet, taking down one website is like cutting the head off of a hydra: two more will grow back in its place. In a centralized Internet, if one of the handful of websites is breached, then a decent chunk of the Internet becomes inaccessible. All of the information you and the people you know kept on that website will be gone or copied by bad actors.

It might be difficult for people who are less tech-savvy to grasp this concept. The reason why the Internet is becoming more centralized is because it makes it easier for people who have less technical skills to access the Internet. The downside is that these people with less knowledge continue to use these centralized services without realizing what it takes to make it easy for them to use it. This means that it is up to us, as more informed people, to spread our knowledge as much as we can, while reinforcing our own beliefs through our actions. That's what I'm trying to do here. I walk my talk with this website, at least I hope that you think I do. I could easily post my thoughts on any of the other highly available social media sites, but I don't because I don't believe in those sites any more. I highly prefer having 100% control over how I share my thoughts.

I hope you'll join me in this journey we're all on, to return the Internet to how it was originally intended to be used. The beauty of decentralization is that it starts with the individual. It's up to every independent party to introduce their own ideas: freedom of information incarnate. That's what the old Internet was about.

Thinking about it now, I should add ways for people to interact with me more easily here. I see why now that most blogs allow for people to add comments. That way, my readers won't have to go to other centralized services to contact me!