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How to make the internet small again

raptitude.com

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Re: How to make the internet small again

#31

Post by zozbot234 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

Gemini space has been my most interesting discovery in 2022. It seems to have the potential to deliver what most people say they want from a progressive "small internet" ie. not a nostalgic "old internet".

Gemini itself is quite silly though - the "tech" is just the modern equivalent of a hairshirt. You could easily have similarly lightweight sites on a modern HTTP(S)+HTML5 platform. It'd be nice if there was a social norm that all 'Gemini sites' must always be provided as both, without the user having to fiddle with proxy sites, "alternative clients" or whatever.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#32

Post by Syonyk »

Lent is coming up, which, culturally, is a good time to do weird things. I tend to disconnect from the internet for those 40 days, though the past two years have been a bit less-disconnecty than I prefer, with Covid and all (especially 2020, with all the shutdowns and such working their way through). I just use it minimally, for work, and basic communications with some people, but quit forums and most other things for that period.

It's quite healthy, and I absolutely encourage it for anyone interested in the space to better understand their online usage and such.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#33

Post by foxfluff »

mattlondon wrote: post #30
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

Gemini space has been my most interesting discovery in 2022. It seems to have the potential to deliver what most people say they want from a progressive "small internet" ie. not a nostalgic "old internet".

I was reluctant to get involved with Gemini initially - it seemed like Gopher had already existed and could benefit from a revival, rather than someone creating something new (after all, Gopher+ actually offers some good possibilities for doing more modern things, and TLS support is now ubiquitous in gopher even if not officially in the spec) Upon reading some more about Gemini though - especially solderpunk's "ponde…

> E.g. there was a client (I forget the details - sorry) that introduced the concept of a unicode "favicon" and a few people lost their shit about it.

Here's the whole story: https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19...

I wish the ML archive linked down there weren't dead, sigh.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#34

Post by foxfluff »

7thaccount wrote: post #22
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

Gemini space has been my most interesting discovery in 2022. It seems to have the potential to deliver what most people say they want from a progressive "small internet" ie. not a nostalgic "old internet".

Thanks for linking to this. It looks like something I've been looking for if I understand it properly. It would be neat to have a barebones OS running on a tiny computer that you could access a simplified internet.

I'm hoping I could find a community interested in.. I don't want to say exactly "low tech" computing but I guess the idea is pretty close. Cheap microcontrollers today are incredibly powerful.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#35

Post by Syonyk »

lariati wrote: post #23

So he is basically going to get bored and binge watch shows on Netflix for 3 days. The irony to me is I would think curating a website like that is as big a problem as anything. That is going to take up way too much time and space in your brain. Get rid of the blog, Netflix and social media then most the problems will go away. No one is doomscrolling arXiv.

> The irony to me is I would think curating a website like that is as big a problem as anything. That is going to take up way too much time and space in your brain.

I find the opposite, actually. I use my blog to offload projects from my brain, knowing that if there was anything weird about whatever project I'm doing, I would have documented it in the writeup. So it's a public presence, but also an external storage for projects. I frequently use it for my own reference later, and at least some other people read it too.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#36

Post by Jaruzel »

zozbot234 wrote: post #31
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

Gemini space has been my most interesting discovery in 2022. It seems to have the potential to deliver what most people say they want from a progressive "small internet" ie. not a nostalgic "old internet".

Gemini itself is quite silly though - the "tech" is just the modern equivalent of a hairshirt. You could easily have similarly lightweight sites on a modern HTTP(S)+HTML5 platform. It'd be nice if there was a social norm that all 'Gemini sites' must always be provided as both, without the user having to fiddle with proxy sites, "alternative clients" or whatever.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. What's needed is a HTML-Lite specification that can be used to drive the 'small' web. No need for bespoke clients - totally accessible. It would also allow older machines to access it as well.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#37

Post by Jaruzel »

Part of what the author ignores here, is the always-on expectation of you by other users. If they send you a WhatsApp message, and you don't reply within minutes, or your 'last seen' timestamp is hours/days ago... they'll panic, convinced that you've falling down a ravine or something.

For those thinking of trying this experiment, I would recommend briefing your whole social circle beforehand.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#38

Post by zozbot234 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #36
zozbot234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini itself is quite silly though - the "tech" is just the modern equivalent of a hairshirt. You could easily have similarly lightweight sites on a modern HTTP(S)+HTML5 platform. It'd be nice if there was a social norm that all 'Gemini sites' must always be provided as both, without the user having to fiddle with proxy sites, "alternative clients" or whatever.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. What's needed is a HTML-Lite specification that can be used to drive the 'small' web. No need for bespoke clients - totally accessible. It would also allow older machines to access it as well.

HTML5 could easily be that specification. Clients could be set to ignore not just JavaScript but even CSS automatically (this can easily be done in current Firefox!), and a separate social mechanism could be used to certify sites as "working properly" when doing this. This would be a meaningful way to make "Gemini-equivalent" near mainstream, in a way that Gemini itself will likely never be.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#39

Post by SuoDuanDao »

deergomoo wrote: post #14

“The internet was small compared to your real life, which was something that happened offline.” Perhaps the author is more extroverted than me (almost certainly, actually), but I find this interesting. What attracted me to the internet as a kid in the early 2000s was just how huge it was even then. Sure, you had to go looking for stuff rather than having it shovelled in front of you en masse, but there was such an en…

To me the internet felt bigger in the early 2000s than today. I went to more individual web sites than I do now, though they had less on them, and there was more diversity in how individual sites looked than today.

Re: How to make the internet small again

#40

Post by Jaruzel »

zozbot234 wrote: post #38
Jaruzel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. What's needed is a HTML-Lite specification that can be used to drive the 'small' web. No need for bespoke clients - totally accessible. It would also allow older machines to access it as well.

HTML5 could easily be that specification. Clients could be set to ignore not just JavaScript but even CSS automatically (this can easily be done in current Firefox!), and a separate social mechanism could be used to certify sites as "working properly" when doing this. This would be a meaningful way to make "Gemini-equivalent" near mainstream, in a way that Gemini itself will likely never be.

I don't disagree that this is one approach, but I don't think we can wholly rely on end users to do this. If small site owners start using this defined 'lite' specification with some sort of visual cue (bring back those little GIFs! 'Proudly built as "WebLite"') we may be able to start a grass roots movement.
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