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The Web We Lost

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Re: The Web We Lost

#41

Post by jmathai »

smacktoward wrote: post #4

I agree with Anil 110% that the Web he's talking about was, in many, many ways, a Better Web than the one we have today. The problem is that it's worse than the one we have today in the only way that most people care about: it's harder. To participate, it expected you to know how to do a bunch of things that seem trivial to tech folks but frighteningly complicated to everybody else. You had to buy a domain. You had t…

> Of course, to get that accessibility, the hosted services make you give up a lot of things. You lose access to your raw data. You lose your privacy. You lose the ability to change vendors if the one you're on turns evil.

That's not true. We've been building OpenPhoto for a year and a half to prove that statement wrong.

You can have the ease of use of signing up for a site without giving up control and ownership of your data. It baffles me why this model isn't more prevalent since we're proving it works and can be made easy enough for non technical users. We need more people building applications this way. Simply put, it's better.

For those unfamiliar with OpenPhoto you can get more information at http://theopenphotoproject.org but the highlights are:

* open source (https://github.com/photo)

* hosted or self installed

* web and mobile apps that work with hosted and self hosted instances (also open source)

* users select where their files are stored (dropbox, box, s3, cx, dreamhost, etc. -- google drive, sky drive coming soon)

* users import photos from 3rd party services

* users are free to migrate from one storage provider to another (we make it a single click)

* urls are properly name spaced so they're true permalinks if you map a TLD to your site

* i could go on forever....but if you're interested head over to https://openphoto.me

Re: The Web We Lost

#42

Post by stcredzero »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #17
majormajor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly prefer the web of today to the web of ten years ago because those barriers to entry prevented most people from doing all the cool stuff Anil talks about. So it was possible to have all those better connections, but it didn't happen much. One way or another, services would've arised that would've tied it all together for the non-technical. I don't think we lost anything more than a potential to have a "bett…

I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today. In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.

> I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today.

The takeaway: If the Network Effects aren't harnessed for the cause of freedom and cool, beautiful stuff, then someone else will harness them to make money off of drivel.

Re: The Web We Lost

#43

Post by fleitz »

The web we lost is still there, it's just that's it's just as accessible as it was 10 years. We post photos to Facebook not because of the technical superiority but because our friends and family can see them.

You can still put your photos on flickr where no one you know will ever see them.

Re: The Web We Lost

#44

Post by smacktoward »

jmathai wrote: post #41
smacktoward wrote: post #4

I agree with Anil 110% that the Web he's talking about was, in many, many ways, a Better Web than the one we have today. The problem is that it's worse than the one we have today in the only way that most people care about: it's harder. To participate, it expected you to know how to do a bunch of things that seem trivial to tech folks but frighteningly complicated to everybody else. You had to buy a domain. You had t…

> Of course, to get that accessibility, the hosted services make you give up a lot of things. You lose access to your raw data. You lose your privacy. You lose the ability to change vendors if the one you're on turns evil. That's not true. We've been building OpenPhoto for a year and a half to prove that statement wrong. You can have the ease of use of signing up for a site without giving up control and ownership of…

I was very careful to say the hosted services make you give up a lot of things rather than you have to give up a lot of things, because it's not necessarily true that you must lose those things to get the easier experience. The services just want you to, because it makes life simpler for them technically (reliable interop is hard) and gives them extra ways to make money off you.

Re: The Web We Lost

#45

Post by groby_b »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #17
majormajor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly prefer the web of today to the web of ten years ago because those barriers to entry prevented most people from doing all the cool stuff Anil talks about. So it was possible to have all those better connections, but it didn't happen much. One way or another, services would've arised that would've tied it all together for the non-technical. I don't think we lost anything more than a potential to have a "bett…

I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today. In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.

Oh, how soon they forget. Remember geocities?

And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher...

It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.

Re: The Web We Lost

#46

Post by marssaxman »

anildash wrote: post #11
untog wrote: post #6

Funny that he says all this then has a Facebook comments box at the bottom of the page. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that IMO- people are far more likely to have their real names on Facebook, and thus leave sensible comments rather than total drivel. But it makes a point that he doesn't include in the article- sometimes these centralised information stores can be useful.

I think I did mention that in the piece, but I deliberately keep the Facebook comments even on articles where I'm critical of Facebook to show that I'm not some extremist zealot. I'm just a normal person who happens to love the web.

It does guarantee that people like me can't comment on your pages, though, which would not be true if you had a normal self-hosted comment system.

Re: The Web We Lost

#47

Post by brigade »

smacktoward wrote: post #4

I agree with Anil 110% that the Web he's talking about was, in many, many ways, a Better Web than the one we have today. The problem is that it's worse than the one we have today in the only way that most people care about: it's harder. To participate, it expected you to know how to do a bunch of things that seem trivial to tech folks but frighteningly complicated to everybody else. You had to buy a domain. You had t…

I think it being harder is only the second most important thing to most people. Rather, the fact that these 3rd party services are free is the biggest factor; even $30 per year for a domain and hosting is more than most people are willing to pay.

Re: The Web We Lost

#48

Post by jmathai »

smacktoward wrote: post #44
jmathai wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, to get that accessibility, the hosted services make you give up a lot of things. You lose access to your raw data. You lose your privacy. You lose the ability to change vendors if the one you're on turns evil. That's not true. We've been building OpenPhoto for a year and a half to prove that statement wrong. You can have the ease of use of signing up for a site without giving up control and ownership of…

I was very careful to say the hosted services make you give up a lot of things rather than you have to give up a lot of things , because it's not necessarily true that you must lose those things to get the easier experience. The services just want you to, because it makes life simpler for them technically (reliable interop is hard) and gives them extra ways to make money off you.

I agree. It's sort of sad that we're in the state we're at because it's "harder" to build and "harder" to monetize. But given that; I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Re: The Web We Lost

#49

Post by [deleted] »

groby_b wrote: post #45
shiftpgdn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today. In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.

Oh, how soon they forget. Remember geocities? And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher... It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.

[deleted]

Re: The Web We Lost

#50

Post by smacktoward »

groby_b wrote: post #45
shiftpgdn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the barrier to entry that we used to have. I know this might be a narrowminded view but that barrier to entry prevented a lot of the drivel that we see on the internet today. In the 90s and early 2000s if you wanted to put something online you had to have at least a moderate level of technical aptitude. Compare that to today's nonstop garbage fountain of ignorance on sites like tumblr, twitter and facebook.

Oh, how soon they forget. Remember geocities? And before that, there were many fountains of ignorance to be found on Usenet (alt.* :), Archie, Gopher... It was in general a smaller community, and that kept the amount of drivel small, too. But it wasn't all as rosy as you seem to remember.

Yeah, when the 2000 Web was flourishing, all you heard about from the neckbeards was how the same people had killed Usenet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

To a certain degree every generation thinks the Net it grew up with is the Real Net, and the Net that came afterwards is a wasteland.

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