The hand-helds gave access to the web without a the burden of a large personal computer. Which could and can be a PITA to maintain. And were slow. The hand-held OSs are in some ways easier to use.
My Uncle was a headmaster for about 35 years. When I presented a laptop to him, he couldn't use it. Told me he had never had to use a typewriter and couldn't use one. It was a really hard hurdle for him to adapt to a keyboard. And he still struggles.
The thing I'm really uneasy about is the Googles tracking everywhere you go, and all of that. It's very difficult to opt-out of tracking. I desperately tried to suppress my location from Google for years, and in one afternoon with a product activation via location/bluetooth they finally appeared to get it. Play services etc., make harvesting your contacts, reading your mail, and following you much easier. And it then becomes that bit easier to turn you into a commodity.
My Samsung was pre-loaded with Facebook. These are shitty little tricks. But advert networks in the browser also make it very difficult to escape the big trackers without a fight. Fingerprinting is everywhere.
We also dump files into the cloud these days. Which is very trusting.
There wasn't much in that rant. But it does stroke our nostalgia zones.
You know something is not quite right, and can moan about it, without having a solution to the problem.
Considering many people have drifted away from some of the big socials. Niche sites, and communities may and no doubt have sprung up elsewhere. Newsnet and PhpBB rooms of old have been replaced by other forums.
In the UK, the web was the preserve of the well-to-do for a long time. Ubiquitous smart phones have put the web in almost every man's pocket these days. And the initial lavish jump on and novelty will wear off. Everyone's a troll and photographer for 5 minutes, or some such.
My Mum has only just really discovered the web in the last year, via Youtube. She still doesn't really get the web, but gets that website (ish). It's still fresh for many.
It's probably just easier to poke at a thing.
Web rings still exist. My partner has a hobby, which is shared on a forum and via Youtube, and they are all very good at supporting and bigging up each other across those boundaries. It's a very vibrant community. And the technology is just backgrounded.
Well you didn't even have to write HTML back then. You could author it in whatever program and FTP it. Which to be fair was still a stumbling block for some, but out of all the hurdles and hoops you have to jump over and through to put something on-line anyway, it wasn't that difficult.
Yeah, you used to get web space and email thrown in with your ISP, in the UK. Snobbery hadn't taken hold, you could just upload a few pages from File Explorer, via FTP. Yeah sure it was rough around the edges, but in many ways far more accessible or rather, less confusing. Not as much a big pile of mud than it is now.
Found myself an old school Kensington trackball. With no scroll wheel. Which is a pain. But I quite like the ball. Shame it's not in the middle of the keyboard.
I like the idea of the nipple in the home row, but it always feels like too much work. Too much pressure etc. So I have resorted to the touchpad on the Thinkpad. But you could do pinch gestures on that, and it isn't too far away.
Remembering lectures, I used to sit in them, watch and take notes. It was only after when reading back through the notes and looking into the problem area I could hear and make out what I didn't really catch first time.
So videos with slides, and notes, and tutorials/practice all can help. It does for me anyway.
In the article there is mention of using ublock to block elements. I didn't even know this was a thing. I zapped the recommendations block on home as suggested in the article.
How do you review what you have blocked/removed and re-add it?