"When lamenting the "old Internet", a lot of people forget that the vast majority of the people creating content on it were gainfully employed with strong career security. Meaning that they didn't need to make money from their hobbyist online projects, so they didn't need to monetize it."
No bogus distinction between "developers" and "users".
No so-called "tech" companies acting as middlemen, calling their commercial surveillance "services".
The word "monetize" is not one I recall seeing on the early internet.
The internet was once thought as a medium that could be used to sell widgets,^1 not as a medium to provide free "services" that are a front for commercial surveillance. People will pay for widgets. No one thinks, "How do I monetize selling widgets?" People will generally not pay for what today's "developers" are creating. Hence the question, "How do I monetize it?" Easy, just ruin the internet by selling people out to advertisers. Until it collapses under the weight of all the garbage.
Perhaps someone might try to argue that people in the early days were just not thinking creatively and "innovating", and that today, they are. Yeah, right. Having lived through those days, what I saw was nerds who failed, and failed again, to find a business model, something they could produce that people would pay for. Eventually they gave up and sold out to advertising, which no one on the internet ever liked at all. Now people think this is a "business model" and represents "innovation". To me, nerds today actually seem less creative and less innovative because generally they all do the same thing: sell out to advertising and conduct surveillance.
1. Not that I am a fan of the company and what they have done to internet commerce, but Amazon has done quite well selling widgets.
No bogus distinction between "developers" and "users".
No so-called "tech" companies acting as middlemen, calling their commercial surveillance "services".
The word "monetize" is not one I recall seeing on the early internet.
The internet was once thought as a medium that could be used to sell widgets,^1 not as a medium to provide free "services" that are a front for commercial surveillance. People will pay for widgets. No one thinks, "How do I monetize selling widgets?" People will generally not pay for what today's "developers" are creating. Hence the question, "How do I monetize it?" Easy, just ruin the internet by selling people out to advertisers. Until it collapses under the weight of all the garbage.
Perhaps someone might try to argue that people in the early days were just not thinking creatively and "innovating", and that today, they are. Yeah, right. Having lived through those days, what I saw was nerds who failed, and failed again, to find a business model, something they could produce that people would pay for. Eventually they gave up and sold out to advertising, which no one on the internet ever liked at all. Now people think this is a "business model" and represents "innovation". To me, nerds today actually seem less creative and less innovative because generally they all do the same thing: sell out to advertising and conduct surveillance.
1. Not that I am a fan of the company and what they have done to internet commerce, but Amazon has done quite well selling widgets.