Making the web fun again
I wanna share a thought I had about this a couple years ago.<p>I'm 33, so I was 14 in 1994, the first time I got onto the web.  It was as bare bones as it got.  I think I beat the IMG tag by a few months, maybe.  Anyways, don't hold me to facts here, I am just imparting a general time frame.<p>The idea of the Internet, and the world wide web, was terribly abstract, new, confusing, delightful.  It made wizards of us that could navigate it.  As a burgeoning geek in desperate need of a personal identity, this digital playground was an infinite resource to push against.  Each chance encounter with an online stranger a blank slate.  It was exotic and alluring and exciting.<p>During this era, a huge swath of us all were experiencing this at the same time.  It was an overlap of our youth, the loss of innocence, and the explosion of this new universe.  It was a hell of a drug.<p>And we got addicted to the newness of it all.  There's a word for this.<p>Neophilia.<p>And this concept, I feel, best describes the ennui I have felt for years now, the booming homogeny the web has turned into.  The web has long since succeeded, but we were children of the laboratory.  We lost our home and we've been trying, in vain, to find a new one ever since.  I can't believe I am alone in this sensation.