I guess I'm cheating a little to find three aspects of the one thing I wish didn't exist for @galenkp's Weekend Engagement series. But when I think about what things in society I wish hadn't changed, all I can think about is the hopeful early days of the internet and the promise it held, and how it taints every aspect of our waking lives these days. Would I turn it off? Hell yeah. But I guess I'm just longing, like most of us, for a more simple time that no longer exists.

There's three things about the internet that I think have had a negative impact on our lives - here they are.

The Internet Being Made Mobile

I love this old photo of Jamie. It's in our first house together in the UK, a tiny miner's cottage with a stream that ran underneath the buiding. In the nook under the stairs, we made a spot for the computer. Yes, young folk, that's a computer. They weren't flat screened laptops or mobile phones you carried in your pocket.

I miss going to a dedicated place to go on the internet. Back when I travelled in the early 2000's you'd go to an internet cafe and pay for fifteen minutes and check your emails or book a flight and you'd be done. Now we go down Tik Tok rabbit holes for more hours than are healthy. Anyone can get in touch with you at any time, and you are bugged by notifications after notifications, and even if you switch them off or leave your phone at home, there's that nagging feeling of having to respond to people.

I even miss the sound of dial up internet. Sure, it was slow, but we didn't know what fast actually was. I loved sitting down with a wine and logging on to MSN to message friends I'd met in Spain that lived in the Yucatan Peninsula or a guy I met in Scotland or Perth. It felt like we had time for those things, back then. Now I'm so worn out and screen tired I tend to be terse and almost absent in any online conversation.

I hate having to make rules about phones - for example, let's vow not to have the phone in bed past 7 pm, let's have breakfast together without checking anything on our phone, including the weather. Let's just pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.

The Internet Being Commodified

Back when we used to rent DVDs from the video dvd shop, we'd google reviews of the films we wanted to watch. You'd get great reviews from real movie buffs that knew their cinematography and their arthouse from their noir. You could read a review without wondering what the vested interest was of the site or being hit by a ton of pop up ads. Now we're lucky to even find an independent film amongst the mass produced, let alone a review that I trust.

Now, too, films and series are on streaming services - you pay a huge company for the priveledge of watching, unless you're watching them on an illegal site, which I'd be okay with but for the fact artists need to be paid somehow.

Everything is an Algorithm & Freedom is Lie

I miss being able to choose where I go and what I watch on the internet without the algorithms steering us in directions they think we want to go. It's not just shopping, either, it's political news and targeted advertising. I spent a lot of time trying to confound the algorithms only to get depressed, knowing that there's some powerful psychology behind it all designed to get me hooked and to feed me what it thinks I want. And whilst I am pretty savvy about not being manipulated, it's depressing to know the rest of the world isn't.

Somehow, we've become google-ified - if Google doesn't like your jam, you're going to slide so far down you may be invisible. The top searches aren't there because they were there first or because they're super popular, it's because people are throwing a shit ton of money at them to make sure they're at the top.

Of course, there's HIVE.

But if someone said 'hey, we're pulling the pin on this - are you in?', I'd say 'fuck yeah'. Of course, I'd try to get your real life contacts first, Hive folk. Because I love you, and I'd miss you, and I'd sure want to keep in touch - or pop by for a real life cuppa one day, whereever you are, my phone on silent, in my bag, under the table.