http://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/

> Twenty-five years ago, a small band of programmers from the University of
> Minnesota ruled the Internet.
>
> And then they didn't.

I've been feeling some feels lately. I feel a bit like the Internet is rotten.
Ther's a saying that software is eating he world, but advertising is eating
software. If you look at the biggest companies in the world, all they are is
advertising companies.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are advertising juggernauts. They've reached where
they are due to different kinds of advertising - Amazon is a bit of an outlier
because they started with books. But they all make (m|b)illions
of dollars through connecting our attention with people who want to take our
money. On the one hand it's nice, when you have some dollars that you want to
spend, or you want to get the best price for something.

But all of these things need one thing: your attention. Without your attention
they canot confnce you to spend your money on some thing or another. Facebook
pays millions of dollars to developers and designers to make their platform as
addictive as possible so you'll spend all yoru time there. In your newsfeed
theyalways show a small protion of the next item so you don't feel "done". 


In the days wehn the web was young we had to actually go out and check for new
information.