thoughts about networked computers

blog/_posts/2022-08-05-my-generation.md

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+---
+title: My (online) Generation
+---
+
+I've been on this IRC channel (Signal now) for maybe 20 years now, maybe more.
+We've wound up having multiple events where we meet in real life,
+and I consider them probably my closest friend group;
+certainly the people I've stayed in contact with for the longest.
+
+Today I mentioned to them that I've dialed back how often I read the news,
+and how that's really helped me,
+and we came to this sort of group consensus that we're pretty atypical.
+Like, most Americans are only dimly aware of what was going on in Washington
+whereas I have literally lost hair from stress over it.
+
+What I would consider to be my online generation was online way before anybody else.
+Most of us were using modems to dial bulletin boards back in the 1980s.
+We remember a time when, in order to get Windows connected to a network,
+you had to buy separate software, and it was buggy as hell.
+Most of us started using Linux in the early 1990s,
+back when only weirdos would consider using Unix for their desktop machine.
+It wasn't clear to us that networked computers were ever going to become popular,
+and seeing things like Facebook take off seem to us like we were the early pioneers.
+
+There's a lot more to say about what shaped our world,
+but others have probably written about it more clearly.
+What I'm trying to point out here is that as the world has begun using the Internet more,
+it's probably challenging for us to tease out what "normal" life is anymore.
+It's so easy to look at hundreds of millions of people tweeting or posting on Facebook,
+and think that represents everybody's day-to-day life, 
+because networked computers have been our entire existence for decades.