30 years and the WWW is about sending people to Facebook to watch a video :(
The endless September marches on.
30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#42The Balkanization of the WWW and the network effects that keep Google, Facebook and Microsoft entrenched are going to make the web a lot less fun in the coming years. I feel more and more like a lemon that will be squeezed either way, and it doesn't matter much to me whether I get bitten by the dog or by the cat. The other article on the HN home page hits quite hard at what the web has become vs what it could have be…
I've been using the web since '92 and as a piece of technology it's had a great run - but I do suspect that the more locked down and closed the web becomes (not to mention almost comically intrusive at times) that it will motivate someone to create a platform that could become a successor.
Most nations are developing increasingly sophisticated regulatory approaches for how the Internet is allowed to operate within their borders. There can be no successor as nearly every nation will have their own requirements, guaranteeing no successor can ever be flexible enough to fit all of them. A successor will end stillborn of hundreds of different regulatory demands: death by committee of 195 nations. Had the Internet originally been conceived in today's environment, with input from dozens of nations, each with their own self-interest at stake, it would have never survived and spread. The sole reason the Internet worked, is because it was initially built by a very small group (compared to the hands touching it today).
Instead what will happen, is haphazard forced customization of the existing Internet. They will beat and punch it into the shape they want it to be domestically. That approach will continue for a minimum of the next 20 to 30 years. Nothing can stop it. The adoption is too high, the investment is too high. Instead of ditching that epic macro investment, nations will bastardize what's already in place and bend it to their own socio-cultural needs or demands. China has already demonstrated how well that can work, how far you can go in molding it to whatever your demands are. If China can do that, others can mostly do what they want with it and will.
The Internet will hyper balkanize, just as most systems from one border to the next tend to (with some exceptions for agreements between large pools like the US & EU). There will never be a replacement system that goes global as the Internet did. It's a one-off - like first discovering a new piece of land nobody had explored before - as nations build frameworks (off their experience with the Internet) to regulate how any digital network can operate, which will make it impossible to smoothly launch a new global network to challenge the Internet. Every aspect of operating socially and commercially on the Internet will get more expensive on average, and especially if your attempt is to operate globally (locally there will be exceptions, countries with low regulatory hurdles and annoyances, but those will be overwhelmingly small nations like an Estonia, New Zealand or Switzerland etc). Internet regulation and control will soar on average, it'll become the compliance nightmare that everything else is that governments get their hands on. That will benefit anybody that gets out of the gate before the barriers get too steep; it will stagnate innovation in most cases and punish anybody that arrives later to the party. Nearly all systems regulated by governments evolve and exist in that mode of suffering, with few exceptions.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#43The Balkanization of the WWW and the network effects that keep Google, Facebook and Microsoft entrenched are going to make the web a lot less fun in the coming years. I feel more and more like a lemon that will be squeezed either way, and it doesn't matter much to me whether I get bitten by the dog or by the cat. The other article on the HN home page hits quite hard at what the web has become vs what it could have be…
> are going to make the web a lot less fun
are going to? It already has. I'm old enough to remember a time when the web wasn't considered a synonym for the Internet, when USENET was actually useful, gopher was a thing, and one could participate in online discourse without constantly walking on eggshells. I want the early 90s Internet back.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#44My sincere appreciation to the CERN's management team which decided to release 'Web software, without royalties or other constraints'.
& to the visionary people from Network Working Group, whose technologies grew the Network beyond the control of the Department of Defence (US); giving rise to the Internet.
Google's coverage of WWW is nice[1], this is the first time I see right click being blocked (for exhibit) on their site. There's no easy way to return from the exhibit without using back as well.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#4530 years and the WWW is about sending people to Facebook to watch a video :(
Even if wanted to choose the other walled garden there is this:
>Please note that the Youtube recording has a time-lag on the soundtrack, so use our Facebook Live page instead for immediate access.
What? CERN can't upload a coherent video+audio stream?
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using the web since '92 and as a piece of technology it's had a great run - but I do suspect that the more locked down and closed the web becomes (not to mention almost comically intrusive at times) that it will motivate someone to create a platform that could become a successor.
Most nations are developing increasingly sophisticated regulatory approaches for how the Internet is allowed to operate within their borders. There can be no successor as nearly every nation will have their own requirements, guaranteeing no successor can ever be flexible enough to fit all of them. A successor will end stillborn of hundreds of different regulatory demands: death by committee of 195 nations. Had the In…
Note that I was thinking about a possible successor to the Web, not the Internet.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#47The Balkanization of the WWW and the network effects that keep Google, Facebook and Microsoft entrenched are going to make the web a lot less fun in the coming years. I feel more and more like a lemon that will be squeezed either way, and it doesn't matter much to me whether I get bitten by the dog or by the cat. The other article on the HN home page hits quite hard at what the web has become vs what it could have be…
> are going to make the web a lot less fun are going to? It already has. I'm old enough to remember a time when the web wasn't considered a synonym for the Internet, when USENET was actually useful, gopher was a thing, and one could participate in online discourse without constantly walking on eggshells. I want the early 90s Internet back.
Less fun than it is today. So even more less fun than it was some time ago...
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> are going to make the web a lot less fun are going to? It already has. I'm old enough to remember a time when the web wasn't considered a synonym for the Internet, when USENET was actually useful, gopher was a thing, and one could participate in online discourse without constantly walking on eggshells. I want the early 90s Internet back.
Less fun than it is today. So even more less fun than it was some time ago...
Yea, that's probably true. Everything gets less fun as time goes on.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#49One design aspect of the original WWW browser that I find interesting is how all info regardless of source collapses to the same style. The absence of CSS with all default block level content. Hyperlinks may be a sub-optimal way of exploring a dense connected network of texts. But for academic paper sites like Arxiv and OpenReview there seems to be a standard schema evolving: paper, code, demo.
Re: 30th Anniversary of the World Wide Web [video]
#50My sincere appreciation to the CERN's management team which decided to release 'Web software, without royalties or other constraints'. & to the visionary people from Network Working Group, whose technologies grew the Network beyond the control of the Department of Defence (US); giving rise to the Internet. Google's coverage of WWW is nice[1], this is the first time I see right click being blocked (for exhibit) on the…
Just hold down Shift and you can use right click in Firefox.