Back when the Internet had Freedom

I was born in the 80s in a remote village in the mountains of Colombia, where the idea of computers felt like a distant dream hidden among trees. There was no drinking water, roads, or reliable electricity. A few years later we moved to a city with some roads and international companies, making technology more accessible, and in 1998, I experienced the Internet for the first time.

It was a Hewlett-Packard computer running Windows 95. The keyboard felt huge and connecting to the Internet made this weird sound from the dial-up connection. If you were traveling to another dimension this must be to do it, I thought. After clicking on the blue “Internet Explorer” icon I was officially online.

Yahoo.com was the gateway to a new world, for some reason it was the first page I opened. Back then, it was this big gray box with blue links all over, categorized by topics with a list of links to click on. Each website was a unique creation, once you clicked on it you could see the personality and vision of its creator. I spent countless hours clicking through these sites, and each one felt like a unique treasure I just discovered. It was like when I learned to ride my bicycle and I could go wherever I wanted to see different things, each new place was a new opportunity to see something different. This power of feeling I could go anywhere meant true freedom for me.

Fast forward to 2024, that’s no longer the case. Most websites and information follow the same template and aesthetics as if they were created by a machine. I no longer have the excitement of finding something different. Most of the content is generated by ChatGTP so it all feels the same. We’ve become trapped by the tools we built; in the process, we gave away our creativity and freedom.

There was a time when you had to use your brain to build a website or write a piece of content. You had a blank canvas waiting for you to paint what was on your mind, something unique that came from you. All this changed when companies added generative AI to their products. Over time we created tools to automate the content creation process, and those tools are getting incredibly good at it.

It’s easy to rely on AI to finish our sentences or even think for us, but I wonder if we traded our freedom for efficiency. When everything looks and feels the same, where’s the uniqueness that made the early Internet so exciting?

There’s something deeply satisfying about looking at something created by a human. Whether it’s a raw, unedited email or a thoughtfully crafted design. In a world increasingly built by AI, human-made creations feel more valuable than ever. I do feel human when I use a product built with total freedom.

Our current challenge is to find a balance, using AI as a tool without letting it replace our thoughts and personalities. In the end, our freedom to create might be the very thing that makes us human.

Being human is about authenticity and imperfection. When we look at something too perfect we don’t trust it. We like what looks like us. We know we are not perfect, we are unique because of our flaws. That’s what’s being lost, our freedom to make mistakes, to be imperfect, to be human.

Don’t let the AI autocomplete you. Being incomplete is what makes us human.