3 ms·
>And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget tha
by jasode 11y ago
>And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.
>The world still needs some fucking webmasters. We might not all be making websites professionally anymore. But we should keep making websites. The passion, the freedom, the joy: we need to pass this on.
I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to empower people but the technology (e.g. simpler format of HTML, or open standards instead of walled gardens, etc) is not really the issue even though it looks that way. I've commented on this illusion before[1].
The underlying issue is the asymmetry between active participants and passive spectators. Most people don't care to make an HTML web page. On the other hand... Uploading a photo of a cat or plate of food to facebook or twitter? Or type a short response comment to a niece saying "love your new dress!"? Yes, a good percentage of people will conquer the threshold of complexity to do that... but it's still not the majority of users.
Even though I don't like it, I've come to terms with the fact that the human race is "wired" to make easy posts on Facebook rather than maintain an HTML web page on a server they control. Most people don't want to be "webmasters".
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540
- z3t4 11y agoYou would need a lot of patience to write an essay on a mobile phone, witch accounts for around 90% of all web "users". Hopefully we'll see inventions in the IO area, like virtual-keyboard-wrist-bands and voice-to-text.
- peterwwillis 11y agoMost people never wanted to be webmasters in the 90s, either. They'd spend their time finding fun apps to make weird characters or RTF-colored chat text, ASCII art, l33t speak, and flashy forum sigs. If they were really artsy, maybe some .gifs. Creativity came in many forms, and still does. Webmasters were just the "left-brained" types (yes, i'm aware that's a pop-psych myth). Nowadays it's the "let's reinvent everything in a new language" types trying to shove an operating system into a web browser, versus the people making art, music, culture and community using technology. Now that I think of it, I actually learned to program because my brother used Geocities' webpage-making template system to make his own site, and I wanted to know how he did it, so I read the source.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoBut if web sites were easier to make, more people would make them. In the 1990s I had friends who literally knew nothing at all about computers but still managed to hack together their own sites with a text editor and some persistence. It was so easy anyone of average and above IQ could do it. Often the results were - let's say - not that great as graphic design. But they got the job done well enough to be useful. So I don't think it's an illusion at all. I think the barriers to entry have become way too high. There's certainly If the barriers were lower, I'm not convinced we'd need FB and Tumblr and the rest at all.
- krapp 11y ago> But if web sites were easier to make, more people would make them. Websites are as easy to make now as they ever were. HTML from the 1990s still works fine. The barriers to entry haven't actually moved at all.
- soared 11y agoThe barriers are essentially non-existent right now. Do you know how simple it is to start a wordpress/squarespace/weebly/cms/cms site?