Subj : Re: Old Geek Thoughts...
To   : GeekWisdom
From : McDoob
Date : Sat Jan 01 2022 18:21:45

 Ge> I like your distinction of ages!
 Ge> 

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to define things this way. The birth of the
world-wide web is considered by many to be the start of the 'information age'.

 Ge> The idea of this whole 'information age' is to share thoughts, and ideas
 Ge> across the 
 Ge> globe. To bring people closer together in the spirit of mutual
 Ge> cooporation. To learn
 Ge> more about others and expand our own horizons

That WAS the idea. And it worked very well, for a while. Personally, I
believe it started to fail when advertizing online became a thing; when money
and greed started taking over.

 Ge> But today it is a "look at me" system. It is geared towards everyone
 Ge> trying to become
 Ge> 'famous' or 'viral'. There are simply too many 'producers' of silly
 Ge> content and too
 Ge> many consumers without much (any?) critical thinking skills.. INMO

And here we are now. A big part of that system is geared toward becoming
'viral', indeed. Because viral videos with embedded ads are the whole point of
the system. You hit the nail right on the head with the word 'consumer'. We
are no longer internet 'surfers'. Definitely not pioneers, anymore. Just
another pair of eyeballs and ears for adverts.

The day I got my first 'high speed' connection (ie >56k), I basically stopped
watching TV. One show title still stands out to me, and says it all: "This
Hour Has 22 Minutes". Granted, it was actually a half-hour show, but it
really was less than 22 minutes of actual show. Hour-long shows are down to
41 minutes these days. That's one-third adverts!

It's just as bad online, now. Worse, in some ways. It's practically impossible
to access some sites unless you have an ad-blocker installed. Hell, some OSes
come with ad-blockers pre-installed. When adverts become such a nuisance that
you have to have special software (or hardware, in my case) just to tame them,
there's a problem.

Another thing I'm using the Pi that PiBBS runs on is PiHole. It effectively
removes any reference to (known) advert servers before the data gets to
whichever device I'm actually using. It's not perfect, but very effective, as
long as you keep it updated.

Forget the War on Drugs, or the War on Terror! I'm stuck fighting the War on
Adverts! (v_v)

McDoob
SysOp, PiBBS
pibbs.sytes.net

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