This is going to come off glib, but I don't think you can believe any of this having actually used the Internet of 1999. As is so often the case, there are lots of real annoyances and offenses behind the sentiment, but still, the Internet of 2026 is vastly better than that of 1999. The amount of things you're just one quick search away from right now would break the brains of a 1999 netizen. We were still required to buy paper books for all sorts of routine knowledge work tasks.

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chromacity 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Dunno. The internet was definitely smaller, but it was also largely uncorrupted, so you could literally just email a random university professor or an industry expert and get answers to dumb questions.

And today, if you want to learn something the right way, you probably still should buy a book (or, I guess, pirate an ebook). I don't think you can really learn much from YouTube influencers and the like.

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tptacek 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I respectfully respect the premise that the choices are "paper books" or "Youtube influencers", though I'll note we didn't have Gilbert Strang's 18.06 course back in 1999 either.

I'd also note that the Internet of 1999 was loaded with spam, bursting at the seams with it, so much so that it was actually a big deal when ~30 months later Paul Graham wrote a post about Bayesian filtering.

	▲	jjulius 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Id also note that the Internet of 1999 was loaded with spam, bursting at the seams with it... [gestures wildly at all the bots in 2026]