When an entire contemporaries of computer user first poke our Department of Energy - eyed typeface onto a young net , many of us were greet with a single , all-encompassing , monolithic face peering back : the AOL Home Screen . To call it a youthful net is n’t even fair — it was a fledged , thriving AOL . It was ubiquitous , it was powerful , it was everything — and it cease up destroy itself , too blemished by design to last . And someone ’s trying to rebuild the Death Star .
How do we bang nobody ’s acquire son of a bitch since the days of the 56k Hindenburg ? intelligence like Warner Bros ’ decision to pull moving-picture show — starting with The Dark Knight — directly through Facebook . News like Rovio putting Angry Birds onto perhaps the only platform other than my dead granddaddy ’s typewriter that does n’t yet support it — yup , Facebook . Which is just , really , wonderful ! If there ’s one matter the internet is lack right now , it ’s yet another fucking plaza to lease a film for 48 hour for several horse or encounter god anathemize Angry Birds . And it adds up — Facebook is reaching its tendril into every undivided affair we care about the internet , far , far beyond the existent reasons we rolled up to Zuckerberg ’s site in the first place . IMing ? Check . electronic mail ? Check . pic sharing ? Check . Apps ? Check . Location check - in ? Yup . Twitter ripoff status updates ? But of grade ! What Facebook has n’t squeeze into its maw by its own will , it ’s given developers deal of incentive to do so themselves . The aftermath ? Over a decade after the web portal vein discontinue making sense , Facebook is attempt to assemble itself , like some ill - conceived Voltron , into the next .
https://gizmodo.com/the-dark-knight-becomes-first-movie-to-be-digitally-ren-5779299
After AOL began its decade - farseeing implosion , gradually descending out of relevancy , the real internet sprang up in the fertile mush that ’d been left behind . AOL was hemorrhaging money like a haemophilic pugilist , but the rest of us were hold too much sport with the tool we ’d be introduced to by this collapsing corpse to notice . IMing , emailing , video , site , games — AOL did n’t invent any of these thing from thin melodic line , but it brought them all together in one commodious ( when you had a dial tone ) , hideously-90s Mecca . It was well-heeled ! It was dull ! It was familiarly and comforting — and stifling . AOL ’s vision of the online existence was what AOL deemed worthy of its walled topiary garden . It was closed — locked up tight . mix tightly , but , in retrospect , really moderately mediocre .
Now , I find out you : Facebook is dissimilar from AOL in at least two major ways . We ’re not saying these two thing are incisively the same . Facebook is societal , and we consider in a social internet because you ca n’t counterfeit the kind of depicted object and recommendations that follow from your Quaker . That ’s the engine in Facebook ’s growth . And secondly , Facebook is far from being as unsympathetic as AOL was , since it ’s a program other companies can use . AOL did n’t have either of those . But Facebook ’s still mediocre ! Even if they ’re outsource a muckle of that mediocrity ( Dark Knight pic renting ) while keep some of it in house ( All of Facebook ’s electronic messaging and whatever clones of popular divine service they ’re currently build ) . Even if it ’s your booster who are spamming you with next generation super pokes .
It ’s also second-rate , because no company online can be honest at everything and so it ’s always horrifying when they try out . Which is why the the internet is great — we get to choose ! site specialize ! require a trillion clips of obscura ? YouTube ! desire gorgeous euphony videos and mini - DoC ? Vimeo ! require to stream movies to every box and handset under the Dominicus ? Netflix is howling !
But no . Facebook , realise it has at least a few daily minutes of the aid of the most tending - impoverished step in our species ’ account , wants to be everything . It want to be Netflix , it want to be your Xbox , it want to be Foursquare , it wants to be Gmail — Facebook wants to be the internet . Will you let it ?
Illustration by Contributing IllustratorSam Spratt . Become a fan of hisFacebook Artist ’s Pageand follow Sam onTwitter
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