[First One!] Internet Musings - Issue #1

Hi. *waves*

Thanks for subscribing to Internet Musings.

I’m not sure fully what this will be honestly, but have always wanted to start a newsletter and I have a lot of thoughts.

I’m not a fan of a Twitter rant and even though I love Twitter dearly, it doesn’t feel like the place for this so when I saw Twitter purchased Revue I said, “let’s try this instead!” - and then a year went by…

So here we go now! Welcome to the 1st issue containing 2 observations of variations of history that are repeating on the internet, with 2 specific examples!

As the Propellerheads featuring the incomparable Shirley Bassey said, “That’s it’s all just a little bit of history repeating”

If you’ve been on the web since the age of ICQ, MSN and the like you may remember the days we reached when it was a lot to keep up on. All these messaging services were a lot of windows and chatting between them became a bit cumbersome so software companies were releasing programs that would combine your messages in 1 place.

I remember using a service that would combine all of these, but can’t for the life of me remember the name - do you? If so please reply and tell me what I’ve misplaced in my mind from many years ago.

My point! My point is that I feel we’re back at this place again. Between Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, Signal, WhatsApp and much more the space is even more crowded now than it was back then. And software developers have come up with the same solution - let’s make a messenger where you can get all your messages in 1 place called…

The difference now though is users are much more privacy conscious so I’m not sure how far they’re going to get with putting privacy based apps like Signal into a 1-stop shop that will (I assume) be reading your messages.

Next is something that’s a few years old and is *just* a concept but saw rotating around Twitter. I’m still not sure if someone is pulling our collective leg on this one, but here’s tweet.

Am I dreaming, because looks just like an iPod. So we went away from them for a decade, just to come back to the same concept? Please hold while I go dust the 2 I have off and attempt to plug them in to play some wonderful Silverchair that I guarantee is on both of my devices still.

This one made me shake my head a bit, even for a concept. The design is by a human named Joyce Kang who is inspired by the iPod.

It’s a wild ride to see some of these tech elements swing back or take another lap around the internet. I guess if fashion can go in/out of style why can’t tech, software, hardware and the internet?

Where do I signup for a Geocities website again and make friends with webrings? Cause I’m IN.

I would love to do more of these and hope you’ll join me.

Thank you for reading.