Nostr feels a lot like the internet was originally intended to work, and in some ways feels very reminiscent of various parts of the early internet experience.

However I do feel some significant differences between nostr and the early internet.

1. A lot of the users on nostr are middle-aged. I don't recall many middle-aged people at all being involved in the early internet days. Indeed, many boomers still aren't very tech savvy, and it's been a quarter of a century.

2. This time we know what we are doing. In 1997, the internet existed, but nobody quite knew what to do with it. Sure, there were a few visionaries, but more than anything, there was some combination of dismissiveness, confusion, and fear of missing out, and then the dot com bubble burst, and we still didn't really know what we were doing or what would be possible.

3. This time we have Bitcoin and Lightning enabling even micropayments.

4. This time we have near total internet and device access by most countries at all times around the world. That is to say, the physical infrastructure is already universal. Many of us were still dialing in to the internet in the mid-2000s and even well beyond over a landline phone, sometimes on business computers because we didn't have one at home.

+What did I miss? Help me out, and let's talk about it in the comments!