The Old Wired

Published: December 24, 2023

Last modified: October 27, 2024

Back when the Internet was just getting started, the web was highly decentralized, consisting of many unique websites often operated by a single individual or a small group, each displaying its own distinct personality, not only in style but also in content.

Nowadays, the web is far more centralized. When one searches the Internet, they most likely do it on “Google,” which directs them to “YouTube” for videos, “Instagram” for personal images, and “Quora” or “Reddit” for questions.

Gone is the era when each click to a website felt exciting and full of life, now replaced by a sterile, artificial, corporate look full of trackers and hostile to their netizens. I, for one, try to follow the Brutalist design for most of this website.

Interesting Stuff

• bestweb.net - Only available on the Wayback-Machine, this site offers interesting finds, found in the late 90s and early 2000s in email exchanges, highlight for me is a list of haiku’s dedicated to error messages.
• matias.ma - The conga!
• sftn.io - A collection of beautiful poetry inspired by computer science and the lain aesthetics.
• lainzine - The website of the digital lain magazine, a magazine about technology, digital life and art, in the lain aesthetics.
• textfiles.com - Offers a body of textiles mostly from the 1980s about various topics such as humour, science, politics and much more.
• xkcd.com - Much more known than all the other sites listed her, but a classic nonetheless. This site has many comics on various topics, mostly science stuff.
• annas-blog - A blog by the provider of the largest online collection of books available in the world.
• wiby.me, marginalia.nu - Both cool search-engines that help you find other small scale interesting sites.
• konaka.com/lain - personally owned site by the scenario writer of “Serial Experiments Lain”, has fun stuff like the lain-font used in the anime.
• whatbeatsrock - Test yourself, what beats rock in rock, paper and scissor?
• tetris - Play tetris online, solo and against others.
• realhumanbean - Are you a real human bean?
• anime dnatest - How based are you?
• Blue vs Green - Test your differentiation of blue vs green in comparison to the population.
• Miracle Sort - My favorite sorting algorithm.
• Submarine internet cable map - Like the title says, it shows a map of all the submarine internet cable around the world.

Tools

• cobalt.tools - A tool to download videos from various websites.
• avestian.org - A dictionary for the Avestian language and contains scripture of Zoroastrianism.
• letsdecentralize - A website listing different methods for decentralization on the web.
• diskprices, serverpartdeals - Two websites which offer good prices for hard disks.
• tteck promox scripts - Various scripts to deploy software on promox.
• HackTheBox Lab - A website to learn pentesting.
• songsterr downloader, scribd downloader, musescore downloader - Tools to download from music note sheet websites.
• GP to PDF - Convert Guitar Pro (gp) files into PDF sheet music.
• Rateyourmusic - Great site to discover music for your favorite genre.
• /lit/ Wiki - The /lit/ wiki for books and reading.
• Philosophy reading list - A reading list of philsophy by /lit/.

Lainchan-Webring