The Fathers of the Internet Urge Today’s Software Engineers to Reinvent the Web

I don't understand why tootie is getting downvoted but it seems that both of you talk about the same thing, albeit with exactly the opposite wording.

Well, technically speaking, writing can be used for both [nearly-]ephemeral communications (letters/messages) and persistent storage (books), so literacy levels alone don't immediately imply that the knowledge is archived and distributed this way.

But your point is absolutely valid, because, I believe, every (or so) civilization that had invented writing, had books or similar concepts (tablets, etc). Persistent information storage in form of written text just can't be "western" thing. Libraries had and continue exist nearly everywhere, regardless of the culture.

People can trade for things. They want a service. They are OK with being cattle. Who are you to get mad? It's like when the US got mad that the Palestinians elected Hamas. They get to vote. Let them have their way.

The web is already decentralized, but lack the convenience of Facebook et al. where you have a virtual identity, a friend list and can choose who get access to your images etc.

This can however be accomplished with something like SSH keys, where your "friend" list is basically a list of public keys. And a small daemon that will let "friends" make queries like "is this a friend or a friend", etc.

With a identity system in place, other things get more easy to solve, like spam, and micro-payments based on chain-of trust and reputation. I also think it would be fairly easy to implement in current web tech like browsers and http servers, e-mail servers, and chat services.

Note that your id will only be a hash (public key), and you will thus be anonymous until you tell others that this is you, and the client software could also ask the user before giving it away to a server.

It would also work with something like TOR, where your IP is hidden, and the hash is your fingerprint, witch you can change whenever you want.

I'm surprised that people seem to believe you're trolling. Or perhaps that confirms your point!

tsunamifury is absolutely right that the relatively static, document-centric model of the web is an extension of Western academic culture. TBL's project was originally shaped by the need for researchers to share papers.

Even in the world of HTTP/2 and all the other horrors of modern adtech, we still have this model. The site operator painstakingly prepares some info for anyone to find via a universal locator. And then it sort of runs itself.

(Caution: the following is handwavey bullshit I'm just making up right now.)

It's at least thinkable that we could go in a totally different direction now that we have instant messaging, always-connected devices, and some ability to do automated natural language processing.

tsunamifury mentions how most of the planet still runs on person-to-person messages. But for Westerners, think about how many jobs have operated in this mode forever, where all their actions are about filtering incoming messages, making decisions, emitting messages, and otherwise coordinating the work of others. In the West, front-line service workers do this, and so do executives, but everyone in the middle has more abstracted work product.

The web made everyone a publisher. Maybe the next thing could be: everyone more empowered to be the customer-relations person / executive of their own life.

That doesn't mean document-centric publishing goes away, but maybe it's not central to the next wave.