> It’s not nostalgia. It’s something else: the distance left by an idea that no longer holds.

sniff sniff... sniiiiiffffff...

Yes, I can definitely smell AI.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbw5KX9TaXY

I never experienced having just one computer for family use, but when internet finally came there was just one line for it and we had to limit our time and carefully coordinate when we got on. But for me that was also a time when computers were used for things other than online-stuff: programming, playing single-player games, drawing, or writing.

There was also a sense that the internet was a place: not a specific place in the house, but "out there", while your own computer was "in here" where your stuff lived. The UI affordances of the time reflected this. The first two icons on the desktop in Windows 95 were called "My Computer" and "Network Neighborhood", allowing you to access your own computer, and other computers nearby with shared files. When old browsers connected to the internet, the "throbber" in the upper right corner would animate. This was distinct from the animated hourglass cursor that indicated your computer was doing some sort of processing, and was specifically designed to indicate that stuff from "out there" was currently being transferred to your machine. Because "out there" was unknown, it was dangerous. It was 42nd Street at night in 90s NYC, and you didn't know who you were going to bump into or what you might find.

And then Steve Ballmer or somebody at Microsoft decided, you know what would be great? What if the browser was the OS, and everything on your machine were accessed just like it was online? One familiar interface for everything! That's why I still don't forgive Microsoft for its Windows 98 UI changes and browser integration. Not just monopoly and anticompetitive reasons, but because they blurred what I thought at the time to be an an extremely important distinction. To me it was a lot like what they were trying to do with making Windows 11 an "agentic OS": inviting danger to ordinary users and making it seem safe. (Geez, now I'm doing the thing.)

Today of course it doesn't matter. Today everything is online all the time. If an application runs on your computer or phone, it's usually still to interact with some online service, but to more closely monitor and constrain how this is done.