Welcome to the Presocial.Network web site and community. Yes, web site. This isn’t an app, a service, a social network, or anything like that. It’s a web site, and hopefully, eventually, a community. Like we used to have. Like we need to return to.
This is a work in progress, but feel free to bookmark the site, join the forum, do whatever. I hope you enjoy it, and learn to appreciate the old ways as you do.
Who Are You?
I think Millennial Kuwanger is a fun name, so I’ll probably run with it.
That said, my name’s Will Greenwald. I’m a technology journalist and writer. I’m a principal writer at PCMag.com, where I’ve covered home entertainment, wearable displays, gaming, and a slew of other subjects for the last 15 years. Before that, I’ve worked at CNET, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC, and written for GamePro and Tested. Professionally speaking, I’m an established expert in TVs, home theaters, AR, VR, and smart glasses.
Also, while I can’t confirm it, I’m reasonably sure I coined the term Wiimote at E3 2006.
Personally speaking, I’m a lifelong nerd and writer. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, where the most interesting thing to do was drive an hour to a halfway decent mall or, on very lucky weekends, a computer show. I built my first PC when I was 14 (AMD K6-2 350MHz with a Voodoo 3 3500 video card), almost destroyed my first PC at 15 (drilled through a mini fridge to put a water block radiator in it, not thinking about condensation), and did destroy my first PC at 16 (replaced the motherboard and forgot about using risers, so I bolted it directly to the metal of the case). I attended Syracuse University, where I majored in magazine journalism and minored in computer science. I’ve lived in NYC ever since (including a few early years across the river in Jersey City, because if Staten Island counts as a borough so should Jersey City and Hoboken).
Besides general tech and gaming, I write genre fiction, primarily urban fantasy/horror. Check out my novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support if you’re interested in that sort of thing, or some of my short stories in the Weird Files section of this site.
Oh, and I’m a Virgo. Which I’m told explains a lot.
Why a Web Site?
Every piece of technology we own is faster, more powerful, and more connected by magnitudes than entire homes, entire office buildings were just 30 years ago. We have computers in our pockets and on our wrists. We have wireless, silent network connections that can transfer entire libraries in seconds. We have AI agents and VR headsets. In theory, we have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips, and we can access it any time from anywhere.
So why does the Internet feel so small and miserable now?
Well, ask X (or, preferably, Bluesky). Ask Facebook. Ask YouTube, Reddit, Tiktok, Twitch. The convenience of social media means anyone can get online and start a channel or a group on any of a dozen or two big-name services. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s chained by the whims of whoever owns those services. Your work and your passion can be swept away immediately by a policy change, or ground into dust by a back-end adjustment. We can do whatever we want, as long as it’s within the constantly changing confines of the awkward, choking playground we decide to do it in.
That’s not even touching the cancer of modern AI. Anything we dare to put online will be scraped and absorbed by the massive idiot engines of a few wildly overinflated, environmentally disastrous artificial intelligence companies that dream of turning the very act of thinking into a subscription service to be paid for instead of doing it ourselves. And they’ve been making progress in that because it’s just so easy to do, and unless you already know what you’re asking for you have no way of knowing if it’s wrong.
If we want to retain our intellects, our identities, our very souls, we must return to the old ways. Because they are still there. You can make your own web site. You can run your own server. You can read and talk and learn and connect without dealing with recommendation algorithms and AI bots. You can have your own part of the Internet.
So, that’s what this is. It’s a web site. I put stuff on it. There’s a bulletin board. It’s nice.