Project 1997: Make Your Own Internet
Before Windows became an AI prison. Ah, the good old days.
“The internet is dying.” “The internet is disappearing.”
We hear these laments quite often now and for good reason. The internet used to be fun. It used to be free and it used to be private. I believe the laments are true. A. I. and the way it is being abused is part of that problem. The other part is the takeover of Big Business. One of the most disturbing things many are seeing is the taking away of ownership of things. At this point none of this is new if one has been paying attention, so I’ve made a plan.
I’ve embarked on a quest this year to build my own internet. To technical people this might sound silly but I’m attempting to re-create what I had back in 1997 in the best way that I know how. So many companies don’t want us to have or even understand the concept of owning our own media today and are busy trying to destroy our access to ownership. Many important things recorded about internet culture or even watershed moments in the larger culture are quietly disappearing. Each of us who cares needs to save as much of what we value as we can before it disappears altogether and then we are told it never happened. For me, this concept dives neatly into the related idea of getting our time and attention back. I’ve been working on both and I think both are becoming extremely important.
Kristin of the Nonsense-Free Kristin YT channel has created her own system for combating the attention stealing that Big Tech companies are steadily doing to us and she calls it Project 2004. I was delighted to see this and I wholeheartedly support such an endeavor. She’s not the only one talking about this. I happened to be working along the same wavelength when she posted that video and I’ve decided to call mine Project 1997.
Why 1997? Because that year was one of the happiest and most productive years of my life. I was in my mid-twenties then and my family had only just gotten a home computer and AOL internet service (back then internet service was dial-up for the young folks reading) and I didn’t have a cell phone back then to distract me. I had just finished my first, serious novel and I was submitting it to publishers, and I was making plans to go to college. The world to me was still full of promise. The internet was brand new for us laypeople and truly a wild place where you had ultimate freedom. I’ve been online since then and have collected thousands of bookmarked websites, videos and other media. I’ve been going through much of that old stuff and nearly a third of it is already gone. Hell, some of my old stuff back then is gone, too. Now, I realize that some of this is natural. Things get old and decay, the owners no longer keep up the site or can’t pay for its hosting anymore, the site has reached the end of its usefulness, and it shuffles off line. This happens. But, something more insidious is happening right along with this natural decay - entities that wish to repaint history, hide factual information or put out a false narrative about , well, anything, are behind the scenes doing just that. This is no longer a time to worry or wring your hands in anguish. It’s time to act by backing up and recording things that are important to you, no matter what those things are. AI platforms cannot be trusted to give us factual or intellectually stimulating information because many creators behind non-open-source AI wish to sell a certain idea of reality and they don’t care about the truth.
So, what is to be done? We can sit and yell all day about it but it won’t solve anything if you don’t create a plan. So, this is what I’m doing. You can call it silly, or stupid or whatever, but I’m protecting my little corner of the internet that I’ve collected since 1997.
I bought an extra, external hard drive to back up all of my stuff (and I got a pretty big one!) I’m a genXer so you can call me an internet bag lady ‘cause I got a lot of stuff.
I went through all of my youtube subscriptions and decided which ones I was going to keep. I went on a hunt for software to import all of my subscriptions and only watch YT videos without all of the AI crap stinking up my feed, unless you like that stuff. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of Shrimp Jesus.
I’m downloading my favorite YT videos using special software for that purpose. That way, if certain shows or videos that expose truths or are just interesting concepts are taken offline, I’ll still have my copies.
I’m recording all of my audible audiobooks the old-fashioned way since audible doesn’t allow me to download them into my hard drive and transport and listen to them where ever I want to. You can use Audacity for that.
I will be looking through all of my many old bookmarks and then downloading my favorite websites and webpages. You also need a special type of software for this. I’ll be using HT Track to do this.
This is a large undertaking and requires a lot of hard drive space and some patience. Getting that extra hard drive is essential for a back up copy of all of your favorite internet things. The next step, if you wish to host everything on a private server is getting an old computer out of storage and setting this up as a server. I haven’t gotten to that yet.
Along with, that I’ve been looking into building my own router, I’ve been reading a lot more and listening to music (on CD and vinyl) and using notebooks more and more for taking notes. I have never stopped using pen and paper for my outlines.
It’s important to take steps to save what you value online because one day it will be taken from you. It’s also important to take back your attention span, for that, too, is being taken away, along with our ability to think critically. I suppose in a way it could be a good thing. If the internet sucks so bad that no one wants it anymore perhaps we’ll get back to interacting with each other, like we used to, back in 1997 and before. Like normal human beings.
