okay, perhaps i should clarify.

1.  no, i do not think the internet as a whole has regressed since 2001.

2.  no, i do not think that there isn’t anything good on the internet anymore.  i wish the good things were still as easy to find as they used to be, but i don’t think they’re nonexistent. (if you read some good websites you think i like and might not have heard of, please tell me.)

3.  i don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with flickr, twitter, rss, or del.icio.us.  twitter was really useful during sxsw, and flickr was invaluable on my roadtrip.  i wouldn’t have been able to upload my photos nearly as quickly, or perhaps not at all until i got back home, if not for flickr.  and i don’t even remember how i lived without rss.

no, my point was that we are using these tools to create content for us, and that content is less in-depth, less meaningful, less interesting than the things we used to write.  it’s fine if we use them (as they are in fact useful), but they’re poor stand-ins at best when we rely on them exclusively.  i have a lot of friends i used to be able to keep up with online.  sure, i can still see their twitters and flickr photos and i can read about interesting links they find, but they almost never say what they think about any of it, and that’s what i miss about the 2001 internet.

for the wiseguys out there: i do not miss frames.  or the blink tag.  or the marquee tag.  or splash pages or flash intros.  that is all.