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Time to rebuild the web?

oreilly.com

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#2

Post by nailer »

View Source still exists, the presence of JavaScript and CSS means that HTML is more meaningful (as it's it's free of display information and behaviour). But looking at the DOM is the inspector is even more useful to undertsanding the tree structure.

I agree with the sentiment of the article, but developer tools are better, not worse, than they were 20 years ago.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#3

Post by nurettin »

While we are reinventing the web, why don't we have independent accreditation institutions which regularly verify the truth behind websites ? Finance seems to have solved this problem.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#4

Post by quantumwoke »

The article mentions the demise of Google Reader (rest in peace) as a turning point for the spread of fake news. I agree that there needs to be some counterweight to the deluge of news designed to influence public opinion. However, I don't think the tool to build that with is RSS.

I recently learned about jsonfeed [0] from Hacker News and built a news aggregator for my own personal use. I believe the future of news content is in aggressive, hackable aggregation tools for a variety of content. jsonfeed is a solid foundation to build on :).

[0] https://jsonfeed.org

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#5

Post by naranha »

SPAs have made almost all desktop applications obsolete. DevTools have deprecated view source. Through progress and innovation the web can do a lot more than 20 years ago.

Sure the web is being abused for tracking by Google and Facebook but that was also possible 20 years ago with a single img-tag.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#6

Post by jacquesm »

nailer wrote: post #2

View Source still exists, the presence of JavaScript and CSS means that HTML is more meaningful (as it's it's free of display information and behaviour). But looking at the DOM is the inspector is even more useful to undertsanding the tree structure. I agree with the sentiment of the article, but developer tools are better, not worse, than they were 20 years ago.

Developer tools are better mostly because webpages are 100's of times more complex now than they were in the past whereas the typical amount of information on the page is still roughly the same.

Understanding how a modern webpage source in combination with a browser results in what you see is a pretty complicated affair, in the past you just did 'view source' and it was obvious what went where.

The web is now much more machine-to-machine than it was in the past when the humans could process the pages roughly as easily as the machines could.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#7

Post by marsrover »

This article is more of a longing for the past than any concrete idea on how the web should be rebuilt. Not only that, but it sounds like the ramblings of someone who isn't merely longing for the past but stuck in it.

Is not being able to copy code from Facebook using view source killing the web? Of course not. If you are just starting out there are more resources available now than ever.

And I hope to God we never have a web built on block chain technology.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#8

Post by jaekwon »

> While many of the technologies I'd use already exist, rebuilding the web around blockchains and onion routing would require a revolution in user interface design to have a chance; otherwise it will be a playground for the technology elite

We've been working on proof-of-stake and blockchain scaling/interoperability infrastructure since 2014. It all starts with a classical BFT algorithm which provides simple light-client proofs and fork-accountability. Your mobile phone can verify transaction finality in 5 seconds, with no need for an hour of block confirmations as in Bitcoin proof-of-work mining.

  https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint
The Cosmos Hub will launch very soon. Lets build stuff! Onion routing for Tendermint would be a great addition. And DNS/name-resolution on Tendermint can actually solve Zooko's triangle.

While we're at it, lets fork Go too. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/e-lang/cQiXS_GnKS4/Zsk...

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder of the Cosmos project, cofounder of Tendermint, and long-time HN lurker.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#9

Post by nickjj »

It's weird that the author mentions the 90s and how the web was not meant to be walled gardens, but then decided to omit AOL from the story.

AOL was one big ass walled garden back in the 1990s. It was pretty popular back then.

The funny thing is, back then, it was popular for 2 groups of people. First were younger kids who wanted to stir up trouble on the network (AOHell, etc.). The second were old people.

My uncle is ~70 and still has an AOL account because he thinks it's "the internet". That's how strong AOL's walled garden / marketing was. Although, it didn't help that back then you would have to dial an AOL phone number on your modem to connect, so I could see how it could be confusing.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#10

Post by nlstitch »

marsrover wrote: post #7

This article is more of a longing for the past than any concrete idea on how the web should be rebuilt. Not only that, but it sounds like the ramblings of someone who isn't merely longing for the past but stuck in it. Is not being able to copy code from Facebook using view source killing the web? Of course not. If you are just starting out there are more resources available now than ever. And I hope to God we never h…

My thoughts exactly. It's constant complaining and referencing old tech.
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