Having started coding in the 80’s and started my tech career in the mid 90s, I have a perspective of the development of this thing we call the Internet more, shall we say, comprehensive than most.
I remember a time when nobody had a computer in their home, much less their pocket. I remember an Internet that was reserved for society, free of commercial interests. I remember a web with no ads.
In the early days, I romanticized the idea that the Internet was one of humanity’s greatest political achievements. As consumerism and neoliberalism were taking over the “airwaves” I imagined the Internet as the egalitarian antidote. No single government controlled it and, for perhaps the first time in history, anyone who found a way to connect to it were equal players in what it would become. If a 20 year old from a small town in Nebraska could make a difference, anyone could.
Clearly, I underestimated consumerism and the capitalist drive to capture markets.
When the .com domain was proposed as a narrow, reserved space for commercial sites, I remember thinking, “Well, let’s see how this goes”. In the early days of Google, they paid you to search. In the early days of Amazon, no tax was collected. In the early days of Gmail, there were no ads.