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What is the small web? (2020)

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Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#21

Post by jazzyjackson »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #12

The Big Web has “users” – a term Silicon Valley has borrowed from drug dealers to describe the people they addict to their services and exploit. This doesn't seem like it's true. I feel like it came from the unix culture. Unless they got it from drug dealers...

Well the drug dealers were certainly there first, etymonline.com has this to say of "user": Of narcotics, from 1935; of computers, from 1967."

I am struggling to find a source for who first called users "users" back in 1967 - Actually I see it being used in the 1965 "Multics" papers [0] and the 1964 article in The Atlantic "Computers of Tomorrow" [1], as if it was already a term-of-art.

[0] https://multicians.org/history.html

[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~traister/greenbf.html

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#22

Post by austincheney »

> The Small Web is for people (not startups, enterprises, or governments). It is also made by people and small, independent organisations (not startups, enterprises, or governments2).

Coincidentally the Who is hiring is front page today. In the comments do a CTRL+F and search for TypeScript and see how many posts are directly correlated with a ginormous framework like React, Angular, or Vue.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#23

Post by yeetaccount4 »

vicda wrote: post #20
LAC-Tech wrote: post #12

The Big Web has “users” – a term Silicon Valley has borrowed from drug dealers to describe the people they addict to their services and exploit. This doesn't seem like it's true. I feel like it came from the unix culture. Unless they got it from drug dealers...

This is so painfully bullshit. Imagine the scientists and engineers at bell labs thinking that the operators of their machines are akin to drug addicts.

Well they did start development in the 60’s, it wasn’t all pot and acid back then.

Oddly relevant to social media nowadays though.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#24

Post by jazzyjackson »

vicda wrote: post #20
LAC-Tech wrote: post #12

The Big Web has “users” – a term Silicon Valley has borrowed from drug dealers to describe the people they addict to their services and exploit. This doesn't seem like it's true. I feel like it came from the unix culture. Unless they got it from drug dealers...

This is so painfully bullshit. Imagine the scientists and engineers at bell labs thinking that the operators of their machines are akin to drug addicts.

The common quip is from the mid 90s, usually attributed to Edward Tufte but apparently the real source is "a guy from Wired":

> And o there is this incredible remark which a guy from Wired told me, that there are only two industries which refer to their customers as users, drugs and computers. "I've just got to have release 7.2", right!

[0] https://cryptome.org/jya/tufte.htm

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#25

Post by themadturk »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #12

The Big Web has “users” – a term Silicon Valley has borrowed from drug dealers to describe the people they addict to their services and exploit. This doesn't seem like it's true. I feel like it came from the unix culture. Unless they got it from drug dealers...

"Users" was a common term for people at PCs in my early networking days (Novell, early '90s), so it's actually much older than the Web. We made jokes about it being the same term used for junkies, but we certainly never meant it in that context. The people who were "addicted" were the ones running the network; the users were happy to leave it all at the end of the day.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#26

Post by pkdpic »

Like many here I want to dig the spirit of this but I am confused about the concrete steps / tools they're describing.

It always seemed to me like ultimately the problem with getting free of the big web would be the physical infrastructure side of the equation.

The modern web does feel controlled by information age rentiers but growing up in the 90s that always felt like an unavoidable given to me.

I was under the impression that the freedom of the web lay in the freedom of information and the subsequent empowerment of individuals to maneuver through and undermine larger systems of power.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#27

Post by quickthrower2 »

For this to appeal to an average person I think youd need some $20 device that works out of the box as a server.

Connects to your wifi like your smart tv does, and then does some black magic to get around the NAT issue to register a subdomain that you can use.

The device provides a facebook or twitter like UI to set up your site.

Even then Im not sure how you'll get people off social media onto this as it is still less convenient unfortunately.

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#28

Post by femto »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #27

For this to appeal to an average person I think youd need some $20 device that works out of the box as a server. Connects to your wifi like your smart tv does, and then does some black magic to get around the NAT issue to register a subdomain that you can use. The device provides a facebook or twitter like UI to set up your site. Even then Im not sure how you'll get people off social media onto this as it is still le…

It currently costs €69.

https://freedombox.org/buy/

Re: What is the small web? (2020)

#29

Post by skeyo »

softwarebeware wrote: post #8
skeyo wrote: post #4

I don't see how Site.js is any different than what he describes as "big web". So you create your own website and host it on a server. That's always been possible. What am I missing?

I think "Big Web" is a profile hosted on "cloud infrastructure" owned by a company with public stock. Whereas "small web" is a website you build/create yourself and host on your own server?

But what is "your own server"? Yeah I host my personal site on my raspberry pi, but most people aren't going to do that. They're going to host on a server owned by a company with public stock.
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