Is the internet DEAD / Has capitalism caught up to the internet?

Maybe this is just me becoming less patient or having less time for real research but I've been getting the vibe that we've passed the golden age of the internet. It used to be pretty easy to find pockets of easily accessible information not normally available outside outside of the internet.

The other thing was internet shopping. It used to be screaming deals with no sales tax. Now it's a bunch of crap with fake reviews. On top of that I've been repeatedly finding cheaper options locally at home depot/big box stores.

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of excellence out there (GRM). I just wonder if vendors now realize they can charge a premium so Joe Blow can order toilet paper from the commode and that the players with the $$$ can out advertise the blogger from Arkansas that has a great idea about some sort of product.

Just me?

I think you nailed it.

I wouldn't say it's dead, quite the opposite: it's now mainstream, with all the problems that entails.

Just you.

Not sure why you sound upset. Amazon became so dominant, so quickly, that it forced long established Big Box players to scramble so they could compete on price.

You have access to more information, more quickly, for such little cost, that it's absolutely staggering. We watch HD television on our phones and bitch when it buffers a little bit. If anything, I think our society has become acclimated to the amazing, and we're a bunch of righteous vajajays that are never satisfied; always seeking out the newer, shiny, next sparkling distraction

I miss geocities.

dculberson wrote: I wouldn't say it's dead, quite the opposite: it's now mainstream, with all the problems that entails.

Yup.

calteg wrote: Just you. Not sure why you sound upset. Amazon became so dominant, so quickly, that it forced long established Big Box players to scramble so they could compete on price. You have access to more information, more quickly, for such little cost, that it's absolutely staggering. We watch HD television on our phones and bitch when it buffers a little bit. If anything, I think our society has become acclimated to the amazing, and we're a bunch of righteous vajajays that are never satisfied; always seeking out the newer, shiny, next sparkling distraction

also yup.

The Internet died with Alta Vista.

calteg wrote: You have access to more information, more quickly, for such little cost, that it's absolutely staggering. We watch HD television on our phones and bitch when it buffers a little bit. If anything, I think our society has become acclimated to the amazing, and we're a bunch of righteous vajajays that are never satisfied; always seeking out the newer, shiny, next sparkling distraction

Described well by Louis CK; "everything's amazing and nobody's happy." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

In reply to Enyar:

Not just you...

Right now the Internet is 1993's Russia. There are parts that are homogenized consumers eagerly buying the Levis jeans they couldn't get there hands on before.

But there is the outlaw side, too. The side were you can buy a MiG 21 and steal whatever you want and people are powerless to stop you.

In reply to Appleseed:

And even if they try to stop you by putting a bit coin bounty on your head, you just rob them of those.....

dculberson wrote: I wouldn't say it's dead, quite the opposite: it's now mainstream, with all the problems that entails.

Agree.

Odd fact, my original GRM username was jrw1621. This was the handle recommended to me by aol and my first email address was jrw1621@aol.com It is a combination of my initials followed by my address; the address of a house that I bought in 1995 and moved from in 2003. I still use jrw1621 in many things internet related, 20 years later.

Originally from this era:

Enyar, I think you're becoming less patient. Prices in "real" stores have come down thanks to pressure from online retailers, and online retailers are discovering that they actually have to turn a profit. Shipping, for example, is a bitch.

Fake reviews, well, that's nothing new. And it's more likely if you're looking at cheap and nasty crap where the seller can give away a few dozen low-cost items in exchange for reviews. You just have to exercise your critical thinking skills a bit.

Shoppin' in my underwear. Yea, the internet is still good.

dculberson wrote:

calteg wrote: You have access to more information, more quickly, for such little cost, that it's absolutely staggering. We watch HD television on our phones and bitch when it buffers a little bit. If anything, I think our society has become acclimated to the amazing, and we're a bunch of righteous vajajays that are never satisfied; always seeking out the newer, shiny, next sparkling distraction

Described well by Louis CK; "everything's amazing and nobody's happy." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

That's a great bit but it isn't me.

I guess dead was a little extreme. I should have said "has the internet lost its competitive edge/been diluted by too much garbage".

The information/technology out there is incredible. I've taught myself things previously unattainable by common folk. I'm just saying the playing field has been leveled and I no longer assume that the internet ALWAYS has the answer.

For instance, the previously mentioned competitive local prices. Also, I've been returning to other forms of media such as print because their are sources that I trust. Instead of google searches coming up with expert testimony on how to build a compost pile I need to decipher if said expert isn't just pushing some sort of product.

In reply to Enyar:

For me personally, when I hit the web in '98 for the first time I was completely enamored with all the things I'd been curious about but never had a resource to investigate...like GRM. Now, 17-years later it's actually pretty rare for me to geek out on something 'new' and go out in search of information. Has my curiosity been satisfied, or am I just getting old/ambivalent? I'm sure is some of both, but it feels like much more of the former.

Enyar wrote: Also, I've been returning to other forms of media such as print because their are sources that I trust. Instead of google searches coming up with expert testimony on how to build a compost pile I need to decipher if said expert isn't just pushing some sort of product.

Or, more likely, the person who posted the information was an amateur who doesn't actually know as much as they think they do. Car forums are full of "how-tos" from people who have blundered through a job once and decide to write a tutorial. I get the phone calls from the victims of these tutorials.

The difficulty of writing a book and getting it published does set the bar a bit higher. Lots of crap makes it into print, but it's a lower percentage IMO.

Before the rise of forums and Google, web sites were also a bit more difficult to post to. Miata.net, for example, has a Garage section that's full of how-to articles. But they were curated, which could sort the wheat from the chaff to some extent. Another barrier to entry, although a much lower one than print.

Now, with forums, the only requirement to write a how-to is the ability to type. So there's a lot more garbage information out there because of it.

I miss the original eBay when it first started. Great deals to be had and people were honest. Simple times.

Keith Tanner wrote: Enyar, I think you're becoming less patient. Prices in "real" stores have come down thanks to pressure from online retailers, and online retailers are discovering that they actually have to turn a profit. Shipping, for example, is a bitch.

Yep, combine with a vastly E36 M3tier economic climate for most of us than when the Internet was new, and it feels like it's impossible to get a decent deal these days.

One of my problems with the Internet these days is that outdated information doesn't go away. Example: I search for info on a CSP build and keep getting hits for ten year old info/data/builds that don't help me now.

It'd be nice if someone doesn't "refresh" their stuff on occasion it went away. Dead links, bad phone numbers, all of it. It just clutters up the web landscape.

It's like a hoarder's garage. Ya never know when you'll need to reference that post on fixing a porous Lamborghini v8 head. One of the things about the web is being a great big equalizer. Everyone has the same info. So yeah, scammers have it and so do the straight up folks. Maybe the innocence is gone, but still a pretty open market for info and products.

In reply to oldtin:

Much like the hoarder's garage, sometimes you can't find what you are looking for when you need it.

Uh, is this good or bad?

I somewhat agree with the OP. The golden age is gone and what we have is vastly superior of the internet a decade ago in terms of what we can do on it; but, in my opinion the quality of content is on the decline. That and the vast array of deadlinks, outdated information, etc.

Random fact: Only 6% of the content on the internet is considered mainstream or what normal folk visit on a routine basis. The other 94% is considered the dark web and rarely will you find those sites on a google/yahoo/bing search unless explicitly searched for.

A really good read about the internet. I enjoyed it mainly because parts of it perfectly describe simpletons that believe everything they see on the internet. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750