alt Hacker News> ... embodying the playfulness, technical ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that characterized the early Internet community.
We're now considering 2001 "the early internet community"? Some people must still have whiplash from how quickly things changed. Shopping malls were already feeling the impact of ecommerce by this point.
Also, in hindsight, the 2000s wasn't really all that collaborative compared to now.
The internet was 19 years old in 2001, and it's 44 now. To me, turning off the NSF backbone in 1995 marks the end of the early internet, because that's when commercial traffic was allowed everywhere with no restrictions. So I'm with you, but others will have different opinions.