The State of the Web - Off topic
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Hello nixers,
"The State of The Web" is a topic I've been circling around for the past year but that we've never had a discussion about on the forums. I'm curious to know what are your opinions on this. To sum it up bluntly I'm referring to the whole media talk about advertisement, PR, public manipulation, privacy, anonymity, taking responsibility for the effect of web technology, gdpr, digital identity, and everything related. For reference I'll post here everything that was already in the newsletter: So nixers, what is your opinion on the "State of the Web". |
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It's funny that you posted this today, because an hour ago I just deleted my facebook account.
I don't have time today to read the links, but I'll come back and do this thing properly. In the meantime have two cents: I'm tired of ugly, flashy, slow, ad-ridden, pop-up, content-recycling, free-ebook-mailing-list, infinite-scroll, lowest-common-denominator-appealing, many-fonted, autoplaying-video, social-media-linked, websites. I know there are bastions of simplicity and good design, but they are by far the minority. Here's a quote from WIRED: The web is Doomed. Today the average webpage is about the same size, data-wise, as the classic computer game Doom, according to software engineer Ronan Cremin. A compressed copy of the installer for the shareware version of Doom takes up about 2.39MB of space. Today's average webpage, meanwhile, requires users to download about 2.3MB worth of data, according to HTTP Archive, a site that tracks website performance and the technologies they use. https://www.wired.com/2016/04/average-we...inal-doom/ One other thing. Maybe I'm being idealistic here, but I think that something great was lost when the web became so centralized. People post photos to instagram, their lives to facebook or twitter, their opinions on reddit, and on and on. Gone are the personalized websites, the pages people would make for themselves. There is so much lost when you compare the standard layout of a facebook profile to the personality that you can convey from a website of your own. Being able to change a header image is nothing compared to selecting font, colors, any other css element that fits your personality. I'll use an analogy here. We went from an ocean full of little boats, each unique and personally crafted, to identical webpage cells on a cruise ship. It's true that centralized websites eliminate the barrier for entry, and allow people who don't care enough to make/host their own site still have an online presence. I just think it's sad that as the web grows, traffic continues to funnel into only a few monstrous websites. |
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I don't think there are less good web now then it used to be. Just a lot more bad. There is not really any 1998 equivalent of modern facebook, twiter, amazon, youtube etc. Also a lot of "modern" or new websites and services is much less bloated then they where, say 10-15 years ago, due to keeping everything optimized for lowpowered devices with limited network (either slow or data-plans), these devices are called phones for some reason, stupid people sometimes even call them smart phones.
Back in the day, most of the users of internet (who where of a similar demographic and culture), didn't contribute more then a comment in some "guestbook". Content was mostly written by some geek who knew how to make and publish a website. Now everyone can contribute, and the demographics now is more or less everyone, not only western computer scientist who like phish and twin peaks. So for us, who are of that demographic, the web felt much comfier back then. But as I said in the beginning, it is not that much worse, in many ways much better. Many more high quality articles and blogposts are created, even if they are not seen on facebook they are written and read, by the same type of people who would have read and written them back in 1998, and probably some more. We now have collaborative wikis, and things like github/lab/whatever is just great imo. Just apply a filter, /ignore the bs, logout, and everything is fine. Do you listen to music you don't like? Do you eat food you think are disgusting? Do you consume information, that makes you angry, sad or disappointed of the web (or humanity)... edit. I guess my point is, maybe we shouldn't focus on what's bad so much and instead focus on creating more good. I don't think facebook will persist for ever, maybe not google either and entities like those usually fall by their own mistakes (Bell labs, IBM, Microsoft, yahoo, myspace, atari, commodore, sega, etc etc. (i know, in one way these where all very different companies, and some are still very much alive today, but they where once the biggest players losing a single game and where removed from a market over night.), this will probably happen to google, facebook and twitter as well. Steph: i don't see any link to your homepage in your profile ;) |
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The web has always been the least impressive internet service. (Usually, "colorful" and "interactive" are the exact opposites of "interesting" to me.)
(09-09-2018, 11:34 AM)Steph Wrote: Here's a quote from WIRED: And Wired's web team does nothing to improve the situation with their bizarre website. (09-09-2018, 08:32 AM)venam Wrote: So nixers, what is your opinion on the "State of the Web". I wonder why this topic keeps coming up in the past few weeks. At least bloggers found that blogs have ruined the web (I, II), so there's that. - The web can be made bearable by using RSS (which is repeatedly cited even in German political newspapers as "a solution". I wonder what happened...), but that's limited. One of the problems I see is that we "tech people" lost our connection to "web devs" long ago. They don't understand why we fear their new shiny JavaScript toys. Everyone who does not misuse his web browser as an "embedded operating system" is a caveman to them. I am randomly lurking in a larg(ish) web dev forum and it is even worse than I described it. I surely hope it will all implode soon. -- <mort> choosing a terrible license just to be spiteful towards others is possibly the most tux0r thing I've ever seen |
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(09-09-2018, 11:34 AM)Steph Wrote: ... ugly, flashy, slow, ad-ridden, pop-up, content-recycling, free-ebook-mailing-list, infinite-scroll, lowest-common-denominator-appealing, many-fonted, autoplaying-video, social-media-linked, websites./ With some obvious allowances for technical possibilities, I don't see how this is fundamentally different from the situation in printed media. Yet we look for (text)books that are meaningful, newspapers that have reliable content etc. On the whole, we should be mighty glad that the printing press exists and by analogy, yes, that the internet and even the web exist. Appeal to the lowest common denominator was always to be expected, purely based on the numbers but likewise, there will always be a space for quality content. I'm sure facebook will disappear, perhaps even soon, but don't get your hopes up. It will be replaced by something more trashy. Best is to be selective ourselves and look for what's good and hopefully contribute to that. And don't forget, real life happens offline. |
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Maybe I should reiterate my personal stance on that topic as it may not be apparent from the commentary on the newsletter links.
(09-09-2018, 10:08 PM)jkl Wrote: I wonder why this topic keeps coming up in the past few weeks. At least bloggers found that blogs have ruined the web (I, II), so there's that.As you say, that topic has kept resurfacing more and more, if not every week, on blogs and news websites. It's not a new subject of discussion but it seems like this last year was especially full of it. It sort of reached a high point when the public/media went nuts over the date when the GDPR was going to be applied and when Zuckerberg went to court. So by sharing those articles I wanted to show how the ones using the web think about the web (wide definition here, anything web tech, or life on the web). In my opinion this discussion is a public awakening to what they weren't usually paying attention to, a wake up call. Especially when it comes to digital identity, what it means, and how we should be responsible for it. There were a lot of cringy post aimed towards the average joe to spread fear, there were a lot of finger pointing, lots of stupid and interesting posts. One thing is sure everyone agrees that a click-economy leads to shitty results and that niche well made and thoughtful content is the way to go. That trend also picked the interest of some revisiting sites like geocity , or RSS, or some other kind of artistic or very personal content platform. Trying to run away from pages infested with ads and bloatwares. As an aside, nostalgia is a marketing scheme that is popular these days, reselling whatever existed in someone's childhood be it movie or tech or anything. However, as you know, for the average person the web, even the whole internet, equates with social networking or business. This is why there have been a lot of work on spreading web-literacy by organization such as Mozilla. But this is what the web has become a place to sell things and this is the fuel that runs it. If there was no money there would be no internet. Remember the Net before the web, it was also a corporate space, and there was certainly no such thing as "net neutrality". Overall I think this whole "state of the web" talk is great stuffs, it's forcing the general public to make a bit more effort to understand what the web technology represent and to take more deliberate choices when they use it. |
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I entirely agree with the sentiment of what most all of you have said. The internet as a widely consumed technology is only about 20 years old. With the constant onslaught of development since that time, it is no wonder that most of the web is filled up by people exploiting the next shiny object. With the ubiquity of this type of media, it seems almost inevitable that there will be a return to a focus on content and simplicity as a method of differentiating oneself from the competition. Hell, even records have made a comeback to some degree.
My biggest fear is the seeming open embrace of selling ones privacy for convenience. Despite the GDPR and the privacy problems with Facebook and Google, it appears as if most people have become comfortable with this exchange. The problem is that people are so used to this monetization strategy that it will be difficult for new services to change consumer habits. As much as I love services like Mastodon that embody the ethics I'd love to see, I doubt they will ever have a fraction of the success of a Facebook or Twitter. Hopefully they can prove me wrong. |
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(09-09-2018, 11:12 PM)Dworin Wrote: With some obvious allowances for technical possibilities, I don't see how this is fundamentally different from the situation in printed media. Yet we look for (text)books that are meaningful, newspapers that have reliable content etc. On the whole, we should be mighty glad that the printing press exists and by analogy, yes, that the internet and even the web exist. I agree totally with this sentiment. My issue is that the technical nature of the web allows for more annoyance, intrusion, and distraction than print media ever could offer. Other than that: I totally agree with everything you said, and you said it much more eloquently than I could have. |
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