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Does anyone remember websites?

tttthis.com

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Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#31

Post by beckthompson »

Llamamoe wrote: post #14
mojuba wrote: post #9

The early internet was like some settlers' shacks, built uncontrollably and unsystematically whereas the modern web is all skyscrapers, residential and business. Uniform apartments, uniform offices all looking very similar differeing in only subtle interior design details here and there. Should we go back to the shack era? Of course not. But maybe we should start a new era of land exploration and start over. It shoul…

The only thing missing from your analogy is the fact that the shacks were filled with personal diaries and curios, while the skyscrapers are mostly chock-full of homogenous sewage slurry.

If you've visited old mining operations / shacks that's pretty common! There are always some weird choices and cool things to see

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#32

Post by DaveZale »

gdubs wrote: post #30
mojuba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind the early websites were mostly built by an enthusiast minority, technical or not but willing to learn HTML and Netscape Composer. You can't expect the whole humanity to be as enthusiastic. The skyscraper era, no matter how much we all hate it, makes the web more democratic: it gives everyone some standardized space (Facebook, Youtube, etc) with algorithmized discovery which is parking and elevators if yo…

Hard to live through what social media has done to society over the past decade without at least entertaining the idea that the higher barrier to entry of being online was maybe not a bad thing.

yes, for sure! It was a different time. Early website authors were pioneers. They had something worth sharing and they thought it worthwhile enough to learn some coding. Nobody was trying to push ads and monetize, and there was no ubiquitous tracking or cookies

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#33

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mojuba wrote: post #9

The early internet was like some settlers' shacks, built uncontrollably and unsystematically whereas the modern web is all skyscrapers, residential and business. Uniform apartments, uniform offices all looking very similar differeing in only subtle interior design details here and there. Should we go back to the shack era? Of course not. But maybe we should start a new era of land exploration and start over. It shoul…

>AR/VR? Possibly although that has already failed once.

I'm pretty sure it's already failed 3 times.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#34

Post by mojuba »

gdubs wrote: post #30
mojuba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind the early websites were mostly built by an enthusiast minority, technical or not but willing to learn HTML and Netscape Composer. You can't expect the whole humanity to be as enthusiastic. The skyscraper era, no matter how much we all hate it, makes the web more democratic: it gives everyone some standardized space (Facebook, Youtube, etc) with algorithmized discovery which is parking and elevators if yo…

Hard to live through what social media has done to society over the past decade without at least entertaining the idea that the higher barrier to entry of being online was maybe not a bad thing.

I don't disagree but notice how it's about the second decade of Web 2.0, not the first one. Profit-driven algorithms is a separate era in its own right. I.e. you can't blame the skyscrapers themselves for your shitty life, you just need to demand more regulation.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#35

Post by assimpleaspossi »

mojuba wrote: post #9

The early internet was like some settlers' shacks, built uncontrollably and unsystematically whereas the modern web is all skyscrapers, residential and business. Uniform apartments, uniform offices all looking very similar differeing in only subtle interior design details here and there. Should we go back to the shack era? Of course not. But maybe we should start a new era of land exploration and start over. It shoul…

I like to compare today's web to radio in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Back then, if you could piece together a transmitter and throw an antenna up, you were a broadcaster and many broadcast whatever they felt like. Just like today's internet.

Social media is the CB radio of the 1970s and 80s when anyone could buy a small rig and do all kinds of weird and wild things for cheap.

But, eventually, something had to reign in all that and the FCC along with international laws and standards came up to calm all that down. In the same way, I think the internet will eventually become licensed and regulated.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#36

Post by krapp »

gdubs wrote: post #30
mojuba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind the early websites were mostly built by an enthusiast minority, technical or not but willing to learn HTML and Netscape Composer. You can't expect the whole humanity to be as enthusiastic. The skyscraper era, no matter how much we all hate it, makes the web more democratic: it gives everyone some standardized space (Facebook, Youtube, etc) with algorithmized discovery which is parking and elevators if yo…

Hard to live through what social media has done to society over the past decade without at least entertaining the idea that the higher barrier to entry of being online was maybe not a bad thing.

If we're talking about the internet before Eternal September, maybe, but putting up a site on Geocities or Tripod or using Dreamweaver certainly was not a high barrier to entry.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#37

Post by ranger_danger »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #8
zahlman wrote: post #3

> You’ve enabled HTTPS-Only Mode for enhanced security, and a HTTPS version of tttthis.com is not available. This, too, is nostalgic, in a way.

It's silly to try and encrypt everything, and arguably it can be worse for the authors privacy. Sometimes a blog post on a plain http web site doesnt need to be encrypted.

Unfortunately this isn't 1999, and bad actors are everywhere. Even ISPs themselves (cough Comcast) have been injecting unsolicited new code into people's webpages for many years now.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#38

Post by prewett »

cal85 wrote: post #27
cal85 wrote: post #11

The last sentence can’t be true. If you go looking for them, they’re easy to find. The problem is you don’t.

Or, when you do go looking, it doesn’t feel the same. Why?

Because you were 25 years younger. When you are, say, 20 years old, people >= 20 years old are likely to be interesting, which was pretty much everyone with a web page. When you are 45 years old, writings from 20 year olds are much less interesting, on average.

Re: Does anyone remember websites?

#40

Post by pessimizer »

krapp wrote: post #24

Websites do still exist. People do know what they are. There are more of them on the web than there ever have been. Nothing is stopping anyone from creating a website if they want. Nothing is stopping you.

They will not be indexed by search engines, though, so you had better email all your friends so you'll have a few visitors.
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