> P.P.P.P.S. Ha, I’ve thought of one more thing: I’ve turned comments on for this post! kottke.org used to allow comments on every post, but it’s been almost 8 years since the last time they were on.
The most telling point of the post was at the very end. Gosh we were so young and naive. Just setup a website to accept comments from all over the world. How exciting! Who knows who might visit! And we'll learn about how people live in other parts of the world and all get together and sing kumbaya. Today, user generated content is a the golden goose that also shits everywhere and honks at everyone that comes through the door unless you police it tirelessly.
Yes, but coming from a world where a long-distance call cost you a fortune, where the only way to talk to strangers from far away was ham radio (or physical travel), where a message took days, sometimes weeks to reach the recipient, it was somewhat inevitable.
> Today, user generated content is a the golden goose that also shits everywhere and honks at everyone that comes through the door unless you police it tirelessly
Meh, some sort of good spam filter + good moderation (not of dissident opinion but of pure trash, oneliners and other boring stuff) and you'll resolve most issues, at least when it comes to blog comments.
I'm not even done with it but I can't recommend enough Kottke getting interviewed by John Gruber on The Talk Show this week. It's a fun trip down memory lane hearing them talk about the beginning of the web as we know it. No one knew what a blog was yet and they were there figuring out what the web was for in the time before mega corps moved in. Kicked up a lot of nostalgia in me. I still read Kottke.org pretty much every day, I like his taste in internet.
That episode really drilled home how old the web is. Even in the early days of building it, I was thinking “there’s going to be a generation that never knew a time before the web,” and I was ready to deal with children from that mindset, but at year 25 we’ve got adults actually working now. Just amazing.
Hey, this is so nice. I used to be a regular on your website. I fondly remember a time when you included my website in one of your article (blog post) and I had that traffic spike. I mean, my simple personal website being linked from the likes of Kottke, 9rules, Adobe, etc were a big-big thing for me. :-)
His font 'Silkscreen' was a hit. It was clean, tiny, and free and found all over the web in the early 2000's. I see it from time to time in various places.
Wow it’s been a long time. This post inspired me to pull my trusty rss reader out of the dustbin and add a couple of feeds. I used to have lots of feeds and it was the main source of web content but somehow that all fell away over the years.
The problem is that there is a deluge of content out there and I have less time to consume it than I did back when kottke and others started. I’ll subscribe to something and never have time to get back to it. It’s like buying books and never being able to read them (another “hobby” of mine). Maybe one day “when I retire” (if I’m lucky enough). Maybe if I had only one interest it would work but I’ve always been interested in so many things—there’s so much out there that’s fascinating! It’s a dilemma I don’t know my way out of.
It's remarkable how influential Kottke still is. I've seen a whole lot of stories start as a Kottke post, then get picked up by an online journalist and either just run as-is or even better, investigated and turn into a detailed article on the subject.
Please do. I do miss the times when the internet was mainly "weird", obscure and different things (compared to what was mainstream at the time), and disagreeing with others was a fun pastime, not something people became angry about.
Oh wow, I'd completely forgotten this site existed.
I remember first stumbling across it way back in 2002, when I'd received a rather unusual spam email and was trying to find out more about its origins - turned out Kottke had blogged about it: https://kottke.org/02/07/an-email-from-ryan-and-jacob
Quite surprised and fascinated to see it still up and running. Time to have a browse and see what I've missed!
Ah yes, the age of blogs. Seems like yesterday you'd stumble on interesting blogs by people, and they would link to 20 or so more interesting blogs... And you could subscribe to all of them using RSS. And there were easy tools to subscribe to RSS feeds, and also publish your blog as an RSS feed.
I love the quote he referenced from Halt and Catch Fire…
> Amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending.” Halt and Catch Fire, season3, episode 10, ~34:00 Joe MacMillian (played by Lee Pace) (talking about a childhood trip to New York City, also related to the internet in 1990)
I love when things I noticed are noticed by others as well. It’s interesting and a glimpse into the unmeasured, uncommunicated worlds that I think people have but don’t really have a reason to talk about, so they don’t. But it still exists.
These blogs (kottke.org , memex 1.1) offer daily-ish roundups of links and articles they find interesting, with a short (50-100 words) intro as to why the reader may also be interested. I don't like using email newsletters (my inbox is flooded enough), and long lists of urls is off-putting.
Are there any other blogs that do something similar?
It's not exactly daily, but Leah Neukirchen's Trivium (the successor to the original "tumblelog", anarchaia) is a fantastic link-only blog: https://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/
[+] [-] zamnos|3 years ago|reply
The most telling point of the post was at the very end. Gosh we were so young and naive. Just setup a website to accept comments from all over the world. How exciting! Who knows who might visit! And we'll learn about how people live in other parts of the world and all get together and sing kumbaya. Today, user generated content is a the golden goose that also shits everywhere and honks at everyone that comes through the door unless you police it tirelessly.
[+] [-] weinzierl|3 years ago|reply
Yes, but coming from a world where a long-distance call cost you a fortune, where the only way to talk to strangers from far away was ham radio (or physical travel), where a message took days, sometimes weeks to reach the recipient, it was somewhat inevitable.
[+] [-] macrael|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
There weren’t upvotes, retweets, etc to encourage less desirable content, etc. The text stood on its own.
We knew there could be bad things but we could handle it, if only because volume.
[+] [-] ge96|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
Meh, some sort of good spam filter + good moderation (not of dissident opinion but of pure trash, oneliners and other boring stuff) and you'll resolve most issues, at least when it comes to blog comments.
[+] [-] macrael|3 years ago|reply
https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2023/03/11/ep-370
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codethief|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|3 years ago|reply
Thank you for keeping the site alive.
[+] [-] cdevroe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EA|3 years ago|reply
https://kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/
[+] [-] traeregan|3 years ago|reply
I was obsessed with pixel fonts for most of the early 2000s, and I found Jason's website because of Silkscreen.
This really takes me back: https://web.archive.org/web/20010603232545/https://kottke.or...
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|3 years ago|reply
The problem is that there is a deluge of content out there and I have less time to consume it than I did back when kottke and others started. I’ll subscribe to something and never have time to get back to it. It’s like buying books and never being able to read them (another “hobby” of mine). Maybe one day “when I retire” (if I’m lucky enough). Maybe if I had only one interest it would work but I’ve always been interested in so many things—there’s so much out there that’s fascinating! It’s a dilemma I don’t know my way out of.
[+] [-] tiffanyh|3 years ago|reply
Not being a hater. Just never understood the passion.
Maybe the appeal is he was one of the first to monetize being a blogger.
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leokennis|3 years ago|reply
It's also crazy how you can increase the usefulness/nice-ness of most things just by doing them for a long time.
[+] [-] joshu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] po|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boffinAudio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkanai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uthinter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progmetaldev|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hombily|3 years ago|reply
I remember first stumbling across it way back in 2002, when I'd received a rather unusual spam email and was trying to find out more about its origins - turned out Kottke had blogged about it: https://kottke.org/02/07/an-email-from-ryan-and-jacob
Quite surprised and fascinated to see it still up and running. Time to have a browse and see what I've missed!
[+] [-] phendrenad2|3 years ago|reply
It ain't so easy these days.
[+] [-] splitbrain|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prepend|3 years ago|reply
> Amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending.” Halt and Catch Fire, season3, episode 10, ~34:00 Joe MacMillian (played by Lee Pace) (talking about a childhood trip to New York City, also related to the internet in 1990)
I love when things I noticed are noticed by others as well. It’s interesting and a glimpse into the unmeasured, uncommunicated worlds that I think people have but don’t really have a reason to talk about, so they don’t. But it still exists.
Filed under secret history, dark wealth, etc.
[+] [-] TurkishPoptart|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
> it’s now a massive, overwhelmingly corporate entity
I get it, I feel similarly, but maybe like life we need to decide what we consume and somehow find a way to consume a more personal web?
Find those corners / collection of sites we feel are good, and share?
[+] [-] ar9av|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicky0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endtime|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RamblingCTO|3 years ago|reply
> I don't like using email newsletters (my inbox is flooded enough)
[+] [-] flobosg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bookofjoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CyanBird|3 years ago|reply
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
[+] [-] karaterobot|3 years ago|reply
aldaily.com
marginalrevolution.com
mjtsai.com/blog
boingboing.net/blog
[+] [-] hackernewds|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kome|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosywoozlechan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecyber|3 years ago|reply