quxnet - about

About

The old internet was for farmers. The new internet is for cattle.

I've been thinking a lot about what happened to the Internet lately
and what I miss so much about it from when I was young. The original
promise was that it would open the entire world of human knowledge
to everyone, but instead, the internet today is controlled by
algorithms designed to offer suggestions based on things we already
like. One of the greatest losses of the internet age is a loss of
serendipity. It's been overtaken by corporations, so what used to
feel like a magical place of discovery has become a commoditized
service we can't escape.

We've lost sight of the Internet's potential because people have
decided it's easier to eat the fast food of Google, Facebook and
Instagram, rather than put effort into their own creations or go
exploring to find something new. This plays straight into the hands
of advertisers and companies who only want you to play in their
walled garden while they harvest your data.

I can remember chatting with people across the world on IRC on my
Atari ST and 2400bps modem, reading message boards and newsgroups
filled with interesting (human-made) content, and feeling that magic
of escaping into a playground of possibility. We lost an Internet we
could explore and discover in an organic way for something
synthetic, curated, and forced. I miss that sense of discovery and
searching for new ways to connect with people online. Forums were an
obscure and fascinating source of content, easily searchable
receptacles of information on specific subject matters. I've grown
weary of being spoon fed by algorithms made by tech bro platforms,
so that's why I made quxnet. A place that rupudiates all of that,
and restores the internet era counterculture that made the web worth
caring about in the first place.

See you on the boards.

-sysop