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Freeing the Web from the Browser

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Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#41

Post by HelloNurse »

oblio wrote: post #26
amelius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. At least it will be interesting to know by how much the amount of available information will increase when those barriers are taken down.

> Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. While there are barriers, are you sure that's true? There's a million options to host content these days. It's much easier than 10 years and much, much easier than 20 years ago. You can get a Wordpress blog or a Medium one with 2 clicks. You can make a Facebook account very easily. They might not…

A Facebook account isn't even a useful platform for the aforementioned funny cat pics, let alone more important and more complex content.

Hosted blogs can be better in theory, but in practice only an expert can use them for complex applications: for example, indexing a collection of cute kitten photos by tags and multiple criteria isn't the same as posting kittens without metadata and offering readers only titles and generic post listings.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#42

Post by TuringTest »

onion2k wrote: post #40
TuringTest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a wiki? :-) Mediawiki, the software behind Wikipedia, already has all those features, includeming the possibility of moderation by privileged users or automatic updates, on a per-page basis. You'd just need to use the software for blog content rather than encyclopedic content.

How is that different from a wiki? Every app is a CRUD app if you ignore enough detail.

I'm asking you about the details that make them different, and which you consider relevant for a "web with user contributions" in the way you described.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#43

Post by icc97 »

joesavage wrote: post #6
icc97 wrote: post #3

Although this talks about freeing the web from a browser, this seems like a pretty good case for a augmenting the browser experience. The first thing being a browser plugin that ignores all links (which is probably a good default for anyone interested in reading an article and not getting distracted), then it just allows a layer on top for highlighting sections creating your own links. I expect this probably already…

Author here. It’s definitely true that extending existing browsers is the fastest route to this kind of behaviour (though it’s not clear to me if it’s the best route). In fact, if you squint a bit (or maybe a lot), it could be argued that with application-specific URL schemes we kind-of sort-of already have the primitives we need to make something like this work. Practically, though, if you want the multi-program sid…

Thanks for the reply! It's a really interesting piece of research. Yes, you're quite right, the browser alone can't interact between all the programs, I was purely thinking of low hanging fruit for the browser plugin.

I watched a Google interview with Douglas Engelbart [0] where people asked him a couple of times if Wikipedia was what he'd envisioned for hypertext, he was very polite about it and said it "was a good start", but he'd clearly wished that we'd got much further by now.

What you're suggesting is definitely a step forward.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQx-tuW9A4Q

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#44

Post by onion2k »

TuringTest wrote: post #42
onion2k wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a wiki? Every app is a CRUD app if you ignore enough detail.

I'm asking you about the details that make them different, and which you consider relevant for a "web with user contributions" in the way you described.

The difference is that those features would be implemented differently in a blogging context. I think that they're things that would improve a collaboration on blog to move from simply getting feedback from users as comments for the author to use to actually collaborating on something to make it better. I haven't thought about what those implementation differences would be; it'd be a lot of work.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#45

Post by joesavage »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #36

oh boy it's the semantic web all over again. it's appalling the lack of citations of the copious corpus that exists and the fact that it's never named for what it is. "what is really lacking — in my view — is research considering the human factors at play" there you go, if someone is interested in the topic, some citation back from 2005 which should be enough to find more references and research http://kmr.nada.kth.s…

To be clear, I’m familiar with the semantic Web and did a reasonable chunk of reading about it when doing this research, but view it as only tangentially related to the ideas I talk about here. If you’re looking for citations around this work, check the full dissertation — there are plenty.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#46

Post by LoSboccacc »

joesavage wrote: post #45
LoSboccacc wrote: post #36

oh boy it's the semantic web all over again. it's appalling the lack of citations of the copious corpus that exists and the fact that it's never named for what it is. "what is really lacking — in my view — is research considering the human factors at play" there you go, if someone is interested in the topic, some citation back from 2005 which should be enough to find more references and research http://kmr.nada.kth.s…

To be clear, I’m familiar with the semantic Web and did a reasonable chunk of reading about it when doing this research, but view it as only tangentially related to the ideas I talk about here. If you’re looking for citations around this work, check the full dissertation — there are plenty.

and this is as novel way to interact with people on internet using concepts delivered in words, only tangentially related to a comment on a discussion board.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#47

Post by submeta »

oblio wrote: post #10

While this is somewhat cool, I have a few comments: > The Web is, without a doubt, the most powerful research tool currently available to man. No longer must researchers comb through endless indices and catalogues to find what they are looking for. True, but most people aren't researchers. Heck, I think most people don't even know what indices are :) > The vast majority of those interested in a piece of work are mere…

>> Billions across the globe rely on the Web to enhance their intellectual capabilities on a daily basis, building understanding through its rich mesh of connections.

> Not really, billions across the globe check out funny cat pics, play games, watch you-know-what, etc. :)

This!

Many resources seem to be distributed asymmetrically, so is being interested in intellectual development, and only a tiny percentage follows the ideals of enlightenment and intellectual development.

So yes, even though we have the biggest resource of instantly available information under our fingertips, many seem not to use it at all for education and development.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#48

Post by morsch »

oblio wrote: post #26
amelius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. At least it will be interesting to know by how much the amount of available information will increase when those barriers are taken down.

> Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. While there are barriers, are you sure that's true? There's a million options to host content these days. It's much easier than 10 years and much, much easier than 20 years ago. You can get a Wordpress blog or a Medium one with 2 clicks. You can make a Facebook account very easily. They might not…

FWIW, you could get free webspace on Geocities and its contemporaries with 2 clicks, 20 years ago.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#49

Post by jusa_ »

Every year for the last 25 or 30 I see this kind of thinking about "information processing" show up.

What it represents, is a gigantic failure of computer science departments world wide not connecting their theories of information with the department of education's theories of information.

Most techies who mentally masturbate about how information should be organized and optimally consumed to maximize the production of good outcomes have never heard of the word pedagogy.

Without understanding that complex topic, they spend their time busy producing articles and collecting them in libraries that only they can navigate. They do this scratching their head wondering why it isn't creating global enlightenment. Ever stuck in some fools quest for a better magical library that will inject wisdom automatically into their heads.

After they hear of pedagogy and after they read a couple of text books on how to turn a first grader into a tenth grader they finally understand the difference between a library and school. They then proceed to think up ways of converting the web (a library) into a school. Most of the time not even fully aware what they are attempting.

And thats why it always fails. Schools have already been invented. They already exist. They are constantly evolving. And they will always be better than a library at producing information processing in the human mind. Every first grader knows not to walk into a tenth grade class room and try to solve the problem on the board there. Now step back and take a moment to think about why that automatically doesn't happen on the web? And what the consequences are of first grader constantly exposed to problems of all sorts of grade levels without any indicator of grade or path to that grade. Naturally these first graders get it into their head there is something very wrong with the web.

If you want to "improve the web" understand pedagogy.

Re: Freeing the Web from the Browser

#50

Post by Torwald »

morsch wrote: post #48
oblio wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, it's amazing how much information is freely available right now, given all the barriers that exist to host content. While there are barriers, are you sure that's true? There's a million options to host content these days. It's much easier than 10 years and much, much easier than 20 years ago. You can get a Wordpress blog or a Medium one with 2 clicks. You can make a Facebook account very easily. They might not…

FWIW, you could get free webspace on Geocities and its contemporaries with 2 clicks, 20 years ago.

Well, "2 clicks" is a bit of hyperbole, but in the spirit of your comment, yes, things improved even over that. The free hosting schemes available today are much more powerful. Just think about what you can do with a Google account. Docs, Drive, Blogger, Sites, Forms, Picasa & on & on & on
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