Another dimesion of Internet Values

[Sivasubramanian M]

In the early years of the Internet, there was a certain degree of simplicity with the way people connected and interacted with one another; Perhaps it was not only "simplicity" but also "openness" and "receptiveness" and a certain degree of trust. 

As in the very early days of telephone when an incoming call was respected and eagerly answered, during the early years of the Internet, any one could find most email addresses, and any one of any importance and stature responded to most email messages, sort of without a fuss. There was anonymity as in a bulletin board or Graigslist, yet within the cloud of anonymity, the quality of interactions were good. 

What has changed now? We have facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and with these new avtaars of applications of the  bulletin board kind, does that simplicity and openness and receptiveness and trust prevail in the same measure? 

Excluding the factor of exponential increase in the number of users, are there other factors that have altered the Internet experience and what can be identifies as the underlying values that characterized interactions? 

I have mentioned, for a start, "simplicity" etc, but what do the early users of the Internet remember?

 Sivasubramanian Muthusamy

sender

[Joly MacFie]

Hi Siva,

I thought danah boyd did a good job of bringing perspective to this in her recent OII talk

https://isoclive.substack.com/p/oii-danah

One thing she introduced was the idea of "friction"

boyd devoted significant attention to the concept of friction. In both technical and legal systems, friction slows processes down, exposes risks, creates opportunities for accountability, and can function as resistance to harmful acceleration. She criticized contemporary AI discourse for treating all friction as inefficiency to be eliminated.

In contrast, she argued that the Internet’s historical resilience often depended on friction and adaptability rather than speed and optimization. The current push toward frictionless AI deployment risks destabilizing systems by removing safeguards and amplifying vulnerabilities.

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Joly MacFie  +12185659365 

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[Iria Puyosa]

Iria Puyosa reacted to your message:

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From: coreinter...@googlegroups.com <coreinter...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Joly MacFie <jo...@punkcast.com>
Sent: Monday, 22 June 2026 20:29:51
To: coreinter...@googlegroups.com <coreinter...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CoreInternetValues] Another dimesion of Internet Values

 

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[Sivasubramanian M]

Thank you Joly. That is very pertinent and Boyd's argument is valid.  

You are among the earliest to have become part of the Internet.  What was the  Internet like,  in the 70s and 80s?

 Sivasubramanian Muthusamy

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[Alejandro Pisanty]

Joly,

thanks - good to read this from hannah. As you might remember I use a framework to explain Internet stuff to people by mapping it to their offline or pre-Internet correlates, then reassemble for better action capabilities re e.g. legislation. The 6 factors in it are scaling, identity, jurisdiction, barriers, friction and memory. 

As it happens, it often is friction that it's easier to act upon. The Internet has been reducing and removing friction all over, which gives us so many one-click opportunities for good but also mischief, and (re-) introducing friction is closest to hand to fix things like phishing (not that it solves it structurally, but it gives people, banks, retailers, online services etc. a handle.) An extension of this is coming soon.

Alejandro Pisanty

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[Alejandro Pisanty]

(correction: danah)

On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 2:30 PM Joly MacFie <jo...@punkcast.com> wrote:

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