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The Web We Lost

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Re: The Web We Lost

#81
This guy has the most awesome title ever!

Director of Public Technology Incubator Expert Labs

Listen to him! That's like master of the universe. On steroids. Go Anil, go!

Re: The Web We Lost

#84

This guy has the most awesome title ever! Director of Public Technology Incubator Expert Labs Listen to him! That's like master of the universe. On steroids. Go Anil, go!

I don't see the sarcasm. He is the Director of Expert Labs, a public technology incubator.

Re: The Web We Lost

#85
:P

I hate to add emoticons to this quite serious discussion, but I can't help but think that we've lost; over the course of 40 years, a lot more than the cooperation and interoperability described here.

We lost operating systems that expect the user to eventually learn a programming language.

We lost the expectation that a user will ever learn one.

We lost the early expectations of a peer to peer Internet.

We lost the hope of encryption protecting anybody beyond a few stubborn nerds and activists.

We lost the idea of client programs, forcing more and more of our data into computers we don't control.

Were losing the idea that the public can manage their own computers, as we have thus far seen a poor job of it.[0]

Were losing our memory that these things were possible, that they ever could have been or could be.

Were losing the chance to change these things for the future, should we wish to.

[0]: I remember reading over 50% of computers on the Internet are in a botnet, if anyone could indulge my laziness and source this; I would be grateful.

Re: The Web We Lost

#86
post #10

Looks like the author is wearing rose-tinted glasses to me. While much of the observations may be true, the web is still a far richer and more valuable resource than it was five or ten years ago.

[deleted]

Re: The Web We Lost

#87
I think people are missing the point. Yes, Flickr is still here and you could use it. But Flickr never really got to mobile (a major strategy failure). Do you know since when Flickr has similar functionality to Instagram? Today - they just released a new version with filters.

The point is, you can't build much on top of instagram, twitter, facebook, whatever. APIs are encumbered by pricy licenses, nobody wants to collaborate. Open standards for sharing data are dying. RSS is dead. Mash-ups are dead. Everything is behind private APIs and walled gardens, the web doesn't connect everything anymore.

Re: The Web We Lost

#88
post #74

I think this is an example of seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses. Yes there was Flickr but you could discover photos. Thing is, Flickr is still there and you can still use it . What's clear from this is that Flickr didn't (and doesn't) cover what is the use case for most people: sharing photos with a limited group of friends and family. Technorati? Honestly, I think this is an example of living inside a ve…

I don't agree that the monetization of the Web has degraded the value (to the user) of links on sites other than links on sites aren't the primary discovery mechanism like they used to be, which is actually a good thing (IMHO).

When hypertext was still conceptual and imagined in microfiche, links were still the primary discovery mechanism of new or related content. I think that idea has stuck around for over 50 years because it is intuitive. It reduces whatever models you might be imagining for discovery into a simpler form.

Google may command the top spot on visited websites, but people use it so often to just open a wikipedia article with the exact query. This suggests Vannevar Bush understood some mechanics of knowledge acquisition better than Larry and Sergei did.

The OP is right. There are fewer links on blogs, and he helped me understand why.

Re: The Web We Lost

#89

:P I hate to add emoticons to this quite serious discussion, but I can't help but think that we've lost; over the course of 40 years, a lot more than the cooperation and interoperability described here. We lost operating systems that expect the user to eventually learn a programming language. We lost the expectation that a user will ever learn one. We lost the early expectations of a peer to peer Internet. We lost th…

Your list makes me want to add:

We lost "six degrees of separation".

(Though that loss seems to run somewhat more in one direction than the other. Still, ordinary people can rub elbows these days with people they couldn't have so much as gotten an autograph from in the past.)

Re: The Web We Lost

#90

I think people are missing the point. Yes, Flickr is still here and you could use it. But Flickr never really got to mobile (a major strategy failure). Do you know since when Flickr has similar functionality to Instagram? Today - they just released a new version with filters. The point is, you can't build much on top of instagram, twitter, facebook, whatever. APIs are encumbered by pricy licenses, nobody wants to col…

But when did it ever?
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