O O Ø O O O O
Enough
My Revolution is Over
Dear Mr. Gore, Mr. Gates, Mr. Nealy, and anyone else who claims they built the internet,
Thanks very much for providing me with many years of fun building shit for your Internet, and other networks that used the Internet Protocol and all the fun applications that sit on top of it. I have been lucky enough to build multi-million user systems at a company that was once really cool, but seems to have all but flamed out in an identity crisis. I was on the bleeding edge of media delivery systems, messaging systems, and big-assed networks at a couple of places, and while the cuts stung, they were bearable. I had fun.
I’m not having any fun any more.
After close to eleven years of playing in the sandbox, I think it’s time to brush it all off, put the toys away, and move on. I know all I want to know about the bits that make domain name services, web servers, electronic mail, web based applications, and the like. I used to love learning, playing, and teaching everyone else about how it all works, but a decade of explaining it over and over to people who don’t get it has become annoying. I’m relegating my interest to hobby status as soon as I can, and am going to go back to helping people use technology as a tool to meet business needs instead of “because it’s internet-based”.
If I have to explain the difference between domain name registration, zonefile hosting, and zonefile management once more, I’ll scream. If my customers blame me for losing their domain because they didn’t read their contract or understand what they’re buying, I’ll eventually wind up on the front page of The Sun. I supposedly work for the Internet company in Canada, and I have yet to come across anyone who understands the core service that (almost) all other services depend on. The marketing folks equate “utility computing” with web hosting, even after we’ve spent almost eighteen months explaining that “hosting!=web hosting.” It doesn’t matter; no one gets it, and they probably never will. It’s time to stop trying to educate the masses, and let them figure it out on their own. I’m starting to froth as I type this, so I’ll stop now while I still can.
The public networks that make up what we call the Internet still have a lot of promise, but it’s not quite the vehicle for change everyone thought it would be for the masses. It’s now a predominantly commercial environment, and a lot of the really cool stuff that everyday people put up can no longer be easily found. Worse, most of the folks who used to publish really useful information haven’t updated in years, and the kind of sites which have replaced them are advertising vehicles that are too cumbersome or irritating to navigate. The really neat bits are all word of mouth, and that makes the information kind of secular. The rest is garbage that is used to convince people that they need what they don’t, and to drive them all to the corporations we feed every day. That’s not why I signed up, and I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.
When I worked for a long-lost group known as GWIS—pronounced “gee-whiz!” (it seemed like a good idea at the time, really)—we were asked what we did. My response was invariably “I make peoples lives more complicated by presenting them with more information than they can process.” I wasn’t kidding, and see now that that’s exactly what happened, and a large chunk of people tuned out because of it. I’m just glad I can blame Al.
I suppose ten years is a long time to have fun. The problem is, the fun stopped three years ago, and I just hadn’t noticed. Thanks again for building such a cool toy, and letting me play with it for so long while getting paid. As soon as I can find my way out of this routing loop, just call me “packet lost.”
Tuesday, Mar 30, 2004
PD DCXLV
P.S. - To those who care, deadsquid.com is my hobby and t’aint going away any time soon.