internet decline

A two-minute Microsoft ad for Internet Explorer 10 in which a karaoke-style song addresses people who hate the browser. It is part of the "browser you loved to hate" campaign.

A 1993 episode of The Computer Chronicles on the early Internet, with guests including Howard Rheingold discussing online community. It is a window into how the internet was seen and what hardware was in use at the time.

Full-day livestream of the 2016 Decentralized Web Summit at the Internet Archive, with speakers including Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Brewster Kahle, Cory Doctorow and Mitchell Baker. It explores the technology and impact of a decentralized web.

Dan Tentler shows a rapid-fire tour of insecure things found on the open internet using Shodan and his own scanning, from unprotected VNC endpoints to industrial controls. The emphasis is on how little security was considered before connecting them.

A ten-minute clip from Jonathan Blow's talk on preventing the collapse of civilization, arguing that software quality and the knowledge to build it are in decline.

A 1994 Today Show clip in which hosts puzzle over what the Internet is and how to say the at-sign in email addresses. It is a short archival piece from the early days of the web.

A short clip of Bill Gates appearing on David Letterman's show in 1995 trying to explain the value of the internet. Letterman is visibly unconvinced.

A clip from a 1995 Late Show with David Letterman in which Bill Gates discusses Microsoft's origins and the internet while Dave is skeptical of computers.

A one-minute 2012 Microsoft television commercial for Internet Explorer 9, set to Alex Clare's 'Too Close'. It pitches a 'more beautiful web' with fast one-click access to favorite sites.

Bo Burnham's song from his special Inside, a satirical take on internet culture, attention and extremism.

A short Frank Zappa interview clip on the decline of the music business, contrasting old cigar-chomping executives with younger industry people.

In an IT Crowd episode clip, Moss and Roy convince Jen that the internet is a small black box. She believes it and carries it around.

Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and Sorrows of Empire, lectures on parallels between the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the United States. He argues the US shows the same symptoms: overextension, corruption, and an inability to reform.

Internet Historian's comedic retelling of how internet users located and captured the flag from Shia LaBeouf's He Will Not Divide Us installation, framed with Metal Gear Solid parodies. It covers the trolling campaign and the geolocation of the flag.

Innuendo Studios uses Phil Fish, creator of the game Fez, as a case study in internet celebrity. The essay argues that fame online works differently from traditional fame, and shows how audiences turn on the people they have elevated.

The full documentary 'The Internet's Own Boy' about programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, with interviews with family, friends and internet figures. It covers his work on access to information and the legal case preceding his death.

Kurzgesagt examines how AI-generated content is flooding the internet, from video and music to news and books. It looks at how this makes verifying what is real harder.

Writer and artist James Bridle shows how strange and disturbing children's videos on YouTube, from surprise eggs to algorithmic mashups, are produced for ad revenue. He argues they reveal problems in a data-driven internet.

Eric Parker connects a fresh Windows XP machine to the internet in 2024 to see how quickly it gets infected with malware. He documents the dangers of running an unpatched legacy OS online.

A DEF CON 22 panel with Rob Graham, Paul McMillan and Dan Tentler on the quirks of scanning the entire internet with masscan. They discuss how fast IPv4 can be scanned and what the results reveal.

A very short clip from the children's cartoon Arthur riffing on the line about not believing everything you read on the internet.

A short Futurama clip lampooning pervasive internet advertising, first aired in March 2000.

A 1995 Letterman appearance in which Bill Gates explains the origins of Microsoft and tries to convince Dave to get a computer and get online.

Steven Pinker's TED talk charts the long decline of violence from biblical times to today, arguing that despite Iraq and Darfur we may be living in the most peaceful era of our species.

Dan Tentler's DEF CON 20 talk on odd things he found on the internet through Shodan, such as stoplights, power systems and other non-computer devices exposed online. It highlights how many devices need no credentials.

Freya Holmer delivers a long critique of generative AI, arguing it degrades the internet by flooding it with machine-generated junk. The video grew out of her frustration finding reliable information about a technical file format.

Branch Education explains how Starlink works, from the ground dish and satellites to phased-array beam steering and data routing. Animations cover how a beam stays connected to a satellite moving at 27,000 km/h.

A short compilation of NBC Today show clips from 1994-95 in which hosts and guests puzzle over the World Wide Web and email. It includes Bill Gates and the Today anchors.

The original Broadway cast performs 'The Internet Is For Porn' from the musical Avenue Q, with press-reel footage synced to the live performance.

A short Supernova 2007 provocation in which Clay Shirky uses a 1300-year-old Japanese shrine, rebuilt periodically, as a metaphor for how networks change business and collective creativity.

Susan Crawford talks at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center about her book Captive Audience. She argues that deregulation and consolidation left a few telecom companies in control of American internet access, so people pay too much for slow service.

A short documentary on the 2015 Yale Halloween costume controversy and the confrontation with Nicholas Christakis. Filmmaker Rob Montz investigates campus free speech and the state of the university afterward.

Van Jacobson's 2006 Google Tech Talk argues that networking should be rethought around named data rather than host-to-host conversations. He contrasts the circuit and datagram views of the internet and sketches content-centric networking as a replacement for the location-centric TCP/IP model.

Bryan Cantrill of Joyent presents Manta, an internet-facing object store that lets you run compute directly on the data. The talk is peppered with ZFS history and Cantrill's trademark commentary on the industry.

FortNine explains how Harley-Davidson ended up in decline, from a narrow lifestyle niche and an aging customer base to the pandemic hitting a company already in trouble.

Super Eyepatch Wolf analyzes why The Simpsons declined after its golden age, pointing to changes in the writers' room and a shift in the style and complexity of its comedy.

Van Jacobson's 2006 Google Tech Talk argues for rethinking networking around named data rather than host-to-host connections. He gives the history and the unsolved problems of the current internet architecture.

Aaron Swartz's keynote at Freedom to Connect 2012 describing how ordinary people helped defeat the SOPA censorship bill. He recounts how the Senate unexpectedly united behind the bill and how grassroots action stopped it.

Jon Bois tells the story of a 2008 bodybuilding forum thread in which users spent a weekend arguing over how many days are in a week. It is episode six of his Pretty Good series for SB Nation.

Tom Scott visits Cloudflare's San Francisco office to show the wall of lava lamps whose camera feed is used as a source of entropy for random number generation. It is a short explainer on how this helps secure internet encryption.