37 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
37 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
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tags: [world-wide-web, computer-history, internet, socio-political]
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created: Monday, November 04, 2024
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---
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# f6564af9_AOL_and_early_internet_enclosure
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We might view AOL, with it's millions of 'free trial' CD-ROMs, as the first
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attempt by a corporate entity to try and enclose the Internet/Web. To take the
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vase informational expanse and reduce it to a single, filtered and contained
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space controlled by a single company.
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_AOL interface from 1993_
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This would later be achieved or approximated more effectively by Google (under
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the guise of doing the opposite - people are "empowered" to access the
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information they otherwise would not find, granted a key to the Internet etc.
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When in fact, making everyone go through the same gate enables surveillance and
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the monetisation of the use of a public resource) and then of course by the
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social media companies.
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AOL in fact started this even before there was a Web, pioneering the concept of
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a web portal, with their [modem-based](cfbef1c4_web_precursors.md) private-BBS
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business model. This provided access to a circumscribed subset of the Internet
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at a time when accessing information was opaque and confusing to the average
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non-technical user. The advent of the web first threatened and then basically
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obviated this model, when access to information via browsers and HTTP servers
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made the process easier and more democratized. Hence why AOL then tellingly
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pivoted to the browser and search-engine market, the next available mechanism of
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enclosure.
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_AOL interface from 1999_
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