A love letter to the Internet

Dear Internet,

I’ve never written to you on this special day before, so I thought I’d give you a surprise this time! After all, we’ve been through a lot together, since our first encounter over a dial-up connection in the early two thousands. I was late to the party, I know, but it’s not my fault to have been born in the early nineties!

Some people say you are slowly dying. They say the spirit of collaboration of the early internet is gone, the curiosity-driven minds replaced by suits without a soul. Old Google search, which of yore was a portal to a hidden world of knowledge and weirdness, now leads to an ad-infested realm of AI-garbage and walled “social” networks.

It pains me to see you are being mistreated, yet to me you are very much alive… you’ve always been! You keep feeding my curiosity, just as when I was a kid. You constantly put me in touch with interesting people from all parts the world, even more than in the past. You let me stay close to my loved ones on the other side of the planet, in spite of the laws of physics that keep us apart.

Not all people out there have the parasitic aim to extract value at all costs! There are still plenty of bloggers who refuse to sell their readers’ eyeballs to the best bidder; we’ve got weird search engines like marginalia.nu and an excellent replacement for old Google in Kagi; encryption of HTTP traffic is finally widespread thanks to Let’s Encrypt; nonprofit organizations like ISRG, Sovereign Tech Fund and NLnet are committed to keeping you healthy. (Let’s not talk about IPv6 adoption, though 😅.)

Just in case it’s not clear enough, I’ll say it again in a single sentence: I believe in you and am convinced you’ll get through the current challenges. Also, though I’m a small fish in the pond, you can count on my help!

Yours through every update and reboot,
Adolfo