91–100 of 263 posts
The old web never went away, it never died. It was you who left. You who runs a corporate browser that can't even load HTTP pages anymore. You who only post on massive corporate run social media (like I am with HN). You who host your website on github or behind cloudflare or don't even bother and just have a mastodon or facebook page (both exclusively javascript applications). The old web is still there, almost invis…
A post like this makes the rounds every few months on HN. What posts like this neglect to consider is that the overwhelming majority of people who use social media apps didn't use the internet during the "old" era. The reality is, this is nerd nostalgia that nobody cares about or wants besides a sub-population of nerds. The masses don't care about blogs, rss, or small networks. The internet grew because the social me…
They don't neglect to consider that at all - what people are nostalgic for is the web before it became mainstream and got ruined by muggles and corporations, when was just an exclusive club for nerds. Implicit to the concept of resurrecting the "Old Web" is recreating spaces that will never appeal to the masses. That's a feature, not a bug.
The "old web" to me was GeoCities and Angelfire, it was customizing your NeoPets shop, it was hosting a web server on your home network on port 8080. It was mailing a check to an address you found on a website in hopes that you'd receive a bootleg anime VHS in the mail a few weeks later. It was webrings, banners, and websites reviewing and promoting other sites through a "links" section. It was right-clicking to copy…
Honestly, I kind of look back on blogging unfavorably. Before that people made websites to showcase their interests and hobbies, and because of that even the most basic looking websites could have a lot of "color" to them. Then blogging became a thing and people's websites became bland and minimalist. Arguably blogging culture is as responsible for the death of creativity on the internet as much as the constraints of mobile-friendly web design and Apple's aforementioned killing of Flash.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tech is stuck behind the symbolic threshold. We're at the point we use the symbolic, which is arbitrary, for literally everything as a substitute, mimic, representation that's in reality. Eventually the symbolic eats itself alive in arbitrariness and society capitalizing on that arbitrariness. This is basic stuff CS doesn't make itself aware of. We're at the end of communication in this symbolic era. You can see it i…
Interesting. Got a blog where I can read more about this?
We don't blog about it in our team since this is about a post-symbolic era, which has some proprietary elements.
But we keep two with papers active exploring the ideas with updated citations.
I stumbled across this whole dimension of arbitrariness in the aftermath of a successful game which the users took as non-narrative. And it really began when my favorite teacher asked if I knew how illusory symbols were and handed me a book called Brain, Symbol, Experience: Towards a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness. From there the threads led in all directions.
Words as arbitrary control.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYaj...
Storytelling as arbitrary control.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d-ODky2MzGuTCoFCKWPw6Jx2...
I think youtube should not be mixed into old web. Either embed your video in website and provide download, or host it on peertube. I know about video file hosting issues and costs, so maybe use appropriatly sized videos? Low quality, low resolution, compress as much as possible, and it will probably won't take more than any average website. :)
I'm building a short-form video platform with R2 as the storage backend. I figured out transcoding but I definitely need a better server for it. The old web isn't coming back because "free" is rife for abuse.
I've embedded a video on my homepage from my platform (dogfooding). Not sure I'll share the platform here when I soft launch next week or so, HN doesn't like incomplete products.
All this to say, video with decent quality is possible for the average website.
I miss the old web, but I'm not sure it's coming back. You can still go on Usenet as well, not sure why anyone is spending time keeping the servers running, because I can not find an active newsgroups anymore. It was nice for a time, but the future has lost it's appeal to me.
Maybe the author, and some the comments are right. I should go build an silly personal website, just in HTML, have all the pages be different styles, have silly buttons, weird Perl scripts all over the place and link to like minded people.
I think it is good to separate the nostalgia from the actual valuable nugget you want to revive. Nostalgia is great for marketing but parsing the missing nugget is the important part.
I have hundreds of CDs I never got rid of and last Christmas I got my son a cheap CD player. Yes, he could have infinite music through Spotify, but what I wanted to give him was that sense of control over music. The physical element has value, which has been appreciated for a while - a lot of that comes from the purposeful interaction required to select, set up and play the music. To listen to entire albums instead of individual songs. An avenue to explore music you only sort of are interested in but give more time because of switching costs.
But more specifically, I remembered the feeling of being a kid and having my own cassette player, walking around with it and bringing music with me. It was one of the first things I owned that could modify my space and change my mood and affect those around me in a positive way. That is a powerful concept when you are little!
I think the missing element of the "old web" is having that sense of control and influence. Not huge control or huge influence, but self-directed and with some friction. Sometimes, the friction is the most important part!
I think youtube should not be mixed into old web. Either embed your video in website and provide download, or host it on peertube. I know about video file hosting issues and costs, so maybe use appropriatly sized videos? Low quality, low resolution, compress as much as possible, and it will probably won't take more than any average website. :)
There's no way for a video platform to work without some sort of payment. Video costs money. Thankfully, Cloudflare R2 is enough for the average blogger. You just gotta figure out how to use it. I'm building a short-form video platform with R2 as the storage backend. I figured out transcoding but I definitely need a better server for it. The old web isn't coming back because "free" is rife for abuse. I've embedded a…
so .txt costs money; .zip costs money index.html costs money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I have read novels. I don’t think blog posts and novels compare at all.
I can't downvote, but this comment feels a little rude or standoffish towards someone who read what you wrote, thought about it, and gave a response. You said you didn't care for 1000 words that someone wrote about their trip abroad, and that's clearly an example to illustrate something, but it's not clear what, because it's contrived and falls apart easily: nobody else really read those blogs either, people read blo…
I do not think "old" helps a discussion and probably impedes it. A better conversation is perhaps about what features we call "old" are good and desirable. Then how we can build a new, sustainable system with those features. Unfortunately sustainable is somewhat equivalent to money. Whatever work you do, and even if you love it, in general it needs to have a functional business model. Businesses that can financially…
If you aren't selling porn or whatever credit card companies can't stomach, there's no problem. I recently stumbled upon a way to accept payments without the credit card companies (crypto): https://www.x402.org
> what would be the side effects of a banner ad type business model?
I remember Carbon Ads and BuySellAds being tasteful banner ad companies. I think one or both folded in recent years. In today's era, respectful banner ads probably have a niche market, especially with the prevalence of ad blockers. You'd be better off implementing x402 instead (paying for access to a resource).
But then your end-user needs to already have a crypto wallet, understand what USDC is, and so on...another niche market.