clear and honest ideas! I feel there is a natural force that will push things _sorta_ in that direction. Re-factoring happens more and more.. Take gravatar.com, for instance. I agree with some of the other posters, however, that people put up with inefficiencies all over the place all the time. It may not be necessary to have an efficient space on the web. Jungle vs. well-oiled machine...
Call for a Better Web
31–40 of 68 posts
Re: Call for a Better Web
#32Sigh...where to start? First, I applaud your passion for making the web a better place, and for being willing to put yourself out there and be open with your views. That said, there's a number of problems with what you're saying and the proposed solution, but let me point out just a few: 1. Normal people don't care. Seriously, my mom uses a handful of websites and doesn't really care about any of the problems you men…
"Sigh...where to start?" I wish you wouldn't have started off with that. It's insulting and doesn't add to the discussion. Just because you see the author's conclusions as somewhat naive (which you've articulated) doesn't make it OK to belittle his effort. FWIW, Other than that snide start it's a thoughtful post.
now it's offending because people say "sigh"?
Re: Call for a Better Web
#33Sigh...where to start? First, I applaud your passion for making the web a better place, and for being willing to put yourself out there and be open with your views. That said, there's a number of problems with what you're saying and the proposed solution, but let me point out just a few: 1. Normal people don't care. Seriously, my mom uses a handful of websites and doesn't really care about any of the problems you men…
"Sigh...where to start?" I wish you wouldn't have started off with that. It's insulting and doesn't add to the discussion. Just because you see the author's conclusions as somewhat naive (which you've articulated) doesn't make it OK to belittle his effort. FWIW, Other than that snide start it's a thoughtful post.
Wow...I really didn't mean it this way at all, but now that you point it out, I can see what you mean.
What I meant was that I feel the same way about some of the issues he raised, and I think that there are lots of large-scale improvements that could be made on the web, but the scope of the problem makes it overwhelming to deal with.
The "where to start" piece in particular sounds bad, but I just meant that I wasn't sure how to articulate the problems I see with his solution. I get that it doesn't come off that way, especially now that I read it. Apologies to the author.
I didn't mean to belittle his effort in the least. It's a noble task to try and effect change in such a large domain because you believe in it.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#34I'd like to remind everyone of a rule related to this: please don't submit your YC application to HN. The reason is simply that if everyone did this, they'd drown out the ordinary content: if you divide the number of applications we get by the number of days between now and Oct 26, the result is many per day. I left this one alive because it's arguably just over the line. It's really more of an essay that mentions th…
Is that the only reason? If so, would it be possible to offer a public place to view apps that was separate from the main page? Judging by the popularity of the "review my startup" posts, I bet tons of people would be interested in reading them.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Sigh...where to start?" I wish you wouldn't have started off with that. It's insulting and doesn't add to the discussion. Just because you see the author's conclusions as somewhat naive (which you've articulated) doesn't make it OK to belittle his effort. FWIW, Other than that snide start it's a thoughtful post.
Wow...I really didn't mean it this way at all, but now that you point it out, I can see what you mean. What I meant was that I feel the same way about some of the issues he raised, and I think that there are lots of large-scale improvements that could be made on the web, but the scope of the problem makes it overwhelming to deal with. The "where to start" piece in particular sounds bad, but I just meant that I wasn't…
No need to apology, I did read that premise the way you explained it right now -- might have been naive now that I think about it. ;-)
Re: Call for a Better Web
#36One of the cool things about the first web was that it was so simple that you could essentially do anything with it. It was originally meant to help people publish their research papers, and now here we are 20 years later doing all this stuff that the original authors never intended.
That's the good thing about it.
This guy's proposal is all about formalizing a bunch of things that we do on the web today. But there's no reason to assume that 20 years from now we'll be compiling lists of our friends online and authorizing random strangers to follow the 140-character random thoughts that pop into our head. Or shortening URLs or any of the thousands of other things we do online every day that the guys at CERN never expected us to do in 1990.
As such, the only thing this "new web" can possibly do is get stale. As a thought experiment, imagine we'd built it in 2004, and it was all about helping people create Blogs. Or we built it in 1999, so it could help you "optimize the internet" by installing spyware on your computer. Worse still, imagine the original creators put in a bunch of codified methodology to publish and critique research papers, thus making it better suited for the task it was originally intended. What exactly would we be doing with that extraneous functionality today?
So yeah, it's cool that we need a fresh start and all. Just make sure it's capable of expanding beyond the silly OpenID/oauth issues that bother us today.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#37Sounds a lot like Vendor Relationship Management: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page
Re: Call for a Better Web
#38Good God, man, have you gone looney?
You say the internet is broken because authentication is a pain?
You say there should be just one social network?
Try telling that to the people making boatloads of cash today.
The internet IS democracy. You can't tell it what it should and shouldn't do, or how it should or shouldn't be. It gets to decide that on its own.
The solution is kinda simple. Don't try to control the internet. It has never worked, and it will never work.
Instead, focus on making OpenID & OAuth easier to implement. Most sites don't want to manage authentication & account creation. They would love to farm it out, but right now, it requires a lot of work to do so.
Instead, take a cue from Plaxo: focus on making a better Identity & Privacy control service. Fill it with simple APIs, and let other sites use it. Make it come complete with lifestream feeds & webhooks. Find a way to use Facebook mail without logging into Facebook.
>>You could have multiple profiles on multiple gateways so that you could have multiple identities if you needed them
Doesn't that defeat your entire stated purpose? Now we're back to 2009: multiple logins on multiple sites.
>>either support the construction of this model or to force the startups you found to embrace this model
Are you TRYING to break the internet? You can't force anything! The internet IS evolution. The internet IS democracy. The internet IS freedom. The internet IS bottom-up, not top-down.
This ain't gonna work.
Build something. If it really is better, people will flock to it. If not, they won't.
There is no force, only do.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#39What the author missed: the internet is by definition a decentralized and aggressively pluralized network, whereas what he's calling for is one single centralized system with a canonical API for every single person on the network and - here's the kicker - that every single person on the network agrees to adopt.
Re: Call for a Better Web
#40What the author is hinting toward need not be centralized entity that stores all your data, the way I read it his aims were quite the opposite.
He is right that we should be able to have this centralized data source, but it would likely be one source for our contacts that we want on our phone, one other source for our online connections of a certain type, and a separate source for our photos, etc. What is necessary is one point where we can find out where the user stores his different data, an shared understanding of what the different data is and how it is represented.
I also applaud you for recognizing that the way things work is less than ideal, and for making a noise about it, because the lack of that noise is what deters people that might have the same thought pop into their head from continuing the train of thought and acting on it.
To those who continue to point out that the author didn't make a great proposal, he wasn't trying to make one, in fact he explicitly said that he's only trying to make a noise, and although he wrote as though he was looking for financial support in his idea, I think his confusion between proposal and making a noise about it was a decision to show that he believes in his idea enough to take the responsibility for it if no one else will, which is a necessary show of belief, because these problems have existed for ages, and then things like openID came along acting like they're about to solve them, and then completely miss the point, so I'm sure he, like myself, believes that people need to hear a louder message to counter their belief that these existing efforts are doing something about the problem, they aren't. Yes, what you say is indeed a more ideal picture of the web, it will have it's downsides, so it probably won't feel the way you've see it in your dreams, but if your sole purpose was to make a noise about this issue, to point out that those responsible for the cutting edge of this area have been found wanting then you may rest assured that you have made your point.
I have also recognized this problem a long time ago and have been working for a little while in the area of social networking systems and this has indeed been part of my ideal picture as well, so hopefully it helps you sleep better at night knowing someone agrees with you and is working on it.
Cheers.