Asteris Masouras, social media editor for Global Voices, reminds us that there was life before the internet, and that we found ways to organize in those analog spaces. Once we got the internet, we got used to technologies coming and going - for a moment, we were all excited about Gopher. Then the web, then Facebook. Systems keep evolving. Our hopelessness today may have something to do with a loss of historical memory. #gvsummit2024

Rebecca MacKinnon, my Global Voices cofounder, leads a session called "Can we save the internet?" at #GVSummit2024, which begins with a brief history. In 2004, as blogging was on the rise, we were optimistic that the internet could open the world for interested participants. By 2014, authoritarians were adapting to the internet, sometimes in cooperation with large social media platforms. At this point, do we still see the internet as a hopeful place?