I thought Al Gore invented the internet
I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
221–230 of 255 posts
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you cope with the fact that a large slice of the population seeks out bad things and refuses good things? The obvious examples are US news sources such as Fox News, Breitbart and Infowars [1]. However, it could also apply to fast food eating habits. [1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudg...
I don't know how to reconcile this. On the one hand, I believe information and speech should be mostly unfiltered. If people want to spread information that denies the moon landing or climate change, or extols the existence of teapots revolving about the sun, by all means. I'd rather know who they are and allow them to publicly exercise their ignorance. I assume the public would help cause a correction of the zeitgei…
Your concerns are entirely fair, but this also isn't a new issue. Tabloid journalism has been a problem for as long as there have been tabloids. That phenomenon is well known to be highly influential around election times among the part of the population who read those tabloids, even though often that same part of the population will be hurt the most by the measures they are supporting but don't fully understand.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#223The marketplace won't sort out the security issues, any more than it sorted out unstable banks. Consumers lack the ability to obtain information, understand the issues, and make good decisions. Computer systems should be regulated for safety, which includes confidentiality and integrity, like everything else.
I think you have expressed here a worldview that is completely different than mine, especially the bit about "consumers." What does "regulated" mean to you?
I'm not sure it's a matter of view; it's a matter of fact. Consumers do not have the ability (much less the time!) to understand everything. They can't reliable figure out which bank is stable, which drug will kill them and which will heal their particular illness, they can't figure out which electrical appliance is safe to use and which will electrocute their family, the fire risks of the various buildings they use, and I don't believe they can understand IT security much less evaluate the security of products.
No matter what our worldviews, consumers won't obtain more capability and time. I'm a technical professional and educated person, and I certainly don't have the time or resources to answer those questions, even the very last one.
> What does "regulated" mean to you?
I don't understand the question. In the case of IT security, I can think of many ways to do it: Liability for bad security, rules requiring good security , etc. I don't know enough about regulation to know what works and in what situations, but some minimal rules and liability sound good.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can experience a better web. It's not easy though. You'll need to give up a lot. I turn off javascript in Firefox (must it really be done through about:config?). A lot of websites work and I appreciate those sites even more. Gmail still offering a HTML version for example. Then there are those that don't like Youtube. I've had to effectively give it up or find a workaround like youtube-dl and mpv. What does suck…
Can't your browser turn off JS on a per-domain basis? Just wondering.
Firefox doesn't seem to afford this beyond installing an extension. Somewhat annoyed that Firefox, with the reputation that it has for privacy and choice, doesn't offer a simple toggle in their settings panel.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#225He is advocating for censorship.
Misinformation spreads everywhere not just the web. Who decides what is "misinformation"?
All speech and information is political, because man is a political creature. Who decides what is "political"?
His first point about losing control of our personal data is right on though.
Even so called "heroes of the web/freedom" are on the "fake news bandwagon".
What the hell have we come to when this is considered enlightening discourse.
We're all in deep shit and this is a taste of things to come this century.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#226> Today marks 28 years since I submitted my original proposal for the worldwide web. I imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information , access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. Seems to me that the above and the points raised in point 2 sit on opposite sides of the spectrum. Either you get a free and open internet where everyone…
> democratic nature of the internet Democracy assumes 1 person has 1 vote. This is not the case here necessarily.
Democratic in the sense that it's more democratic than previous publishing platforms because the barrier to entry is lower.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on here, at least as far as the principles go, even if I might lack your flair for the dramatic. :-) That said, I really don't think developing standards for interoperability and federation is such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, modern networking -- including the Internet -- is built on numerous such standards, carefully designed and documented, widely…
> TCP/IP / SSL / SMTP / HTTP Were all invented long ago and were all first of their kind. Creating a new standard when there are no wide spread alternatives is easy, doing the same where everyone is already invested is hard. E.g. that's why payment systems suck universally.
I don't know about HTTP, but the first three were definitely not first of their kind, particularly when you take into account how they operate now compared to their original incarnations.
GSSAPI and Kerberos, for example, both predate SSL (Kerberos by nearly a decade if I have my dates right). SMTP was originally intended only to transit mail protocols across networks, clearly evidencing that there were internal (incompatible) mail protocols before then. UUCP and FTP were commonly used before SMTP to transfer messages; it took over a decade after its invention for SMTP to finally see off UUCP, and a few more years for X.400 (invented more or less concurrently) to fade away as a potential competitor.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how to reconcile this. On the one hand, I believe information and speech should be mostly unfiltered. If people want to spread information that denies the moon landing or climate change, or extols the existence of teapots revolving about the sun, by all means. I'd rather know who they are and allow them to publicly exercise their ignorance. I assume the public would help cause a correction of the zeitgei…
Your concerns are entirely fair, but this also isn't a new issue. Tabloid journalism has been a problem for as long as there have been tabloids. That phenomenon is well known to be highly influential around election times among the part of the population who read those tabloids, even though often that same part of the population will be hurt the most by the measures they are supporting but don't fully understand.
It seems to me that one crucial factor is what you might call "the destruction of the gatekeepers". In politics, you had systematic lying that was intended to deceive people, and lies led directly to Brexit in the UK and Trump's election in the USA.
There's a reasonably good account in "Donald Trump breaks the conservative media" http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudg...
In the health field, we've seen systematic lying by the tobacco industry and the sugar industry, and quite a lot of deception (some no doubt sincere) in the food industry. The "gluten free" craze is one example.
There's a (possibly apocryphal) quote attributed to GK Chesterton that says "When men cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing but in anything."
When people cease to believe their governments, their doctors, their honest fact-checked newspapers and so on, they are easily exploited by snake-oil salesmen.
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> TCP/IP / SSL / SMTP / HTTP Were all invented long ago and were all first of their kind. Creating a new standard when there are no wide spread alternatives is easy, doing the same where everyone is already invested is hard. E.g. that's why payment systems suck universally.
I don't know about HTTP, but the first three were definitely not first of their kind, particularly when you take into account how they operate now compared to their original incarnations. GSSAPI and Kerberos, for example, both predate SSL (Kerberos by nearly a decade if I have my dates right). SMTP was originally intended only to transit mail protocols across networks, clearly evidencing that there were internal (inc…
I think we can easily replace "were the first of their kind" with "were invented in times when there was a desperate need of a good protocol to do X, Y and Z" and you and the parent poster would be in a full agreement, don't you think?
I think his general point was -- even if there were some ugly corners of the technology, people were like "you know what, this is the N-th try and we really REALLY need this tech, let's move forward with it and fix the problem later". I think we all know how that usually ends, don't we?
It ends with a lot of legacy baggage and huge economic pressure to not change anything. So we come to our present dilemmas (outlined in the original post).
Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> TCP/IP / SSL / SMTP / HTTP Were all invented long ago and were all first of their kind. Creating a new standard when there are no wide spread alternatives is easy, doing the same where everyone is already invested is hard. E.g. that's why payment systems suck universally.
As someone who does a fair bit of work in networking fields, I think that's a pessimistic view. Most people don't see when the underlying infrastructure develops, in no small part because the standards and compatibility issues are so carefully considered, but that doesn't mean there aren't newer standards and protocols being developed all the time. We're now on something like the fifth mainstream WiFi standard, for e…
I like optimistic people (no sarcasm). But I think you're overestimating the cooperative abilities of Homo Sapiens. Every bank, store and pet garage invents their mobile payments nowadays. This is very bad and leads to segmentation of efforts which shouldn't exist in the first place.
Also, I'd argue HTTP/2 is not such a huge improvement as many make it out to be, but I can't deny it's some improvement compared to 1.0/1.1 -- that's a fact.