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I meant it a little facetiously, and not as condescending to "ordinary people" as it maybe sounded. Like you said a lot of it is just a factor of free time, not

I meant it a little facetiously, and not as condescending to "ordinary people" as it maybe sounded. Like you said a lot of it is just a factor of free time, not having the free time to learn PPP settings and HTML and all that (as I did when I was a teenager). I'm not suggesting that everybody should learn HTML or else they're an idiot, far from it, if someone just wants to focus on writing for a blog, etc. then there absolutely should be tools to make that simple. One of the laments in the article is the way the web has changed from the early days of simple HTML webpages people put up themselves focused on astrophysics etc., and I think that does speak to a difference of interests and abilities in the web's community over time. And people do have differences in intelligence, as touchy and controversial a subject as it is. I say that not to make myself feel like some shining genius, I'm not, but commercial interests tend to exploit whatever they can exploit (unfortunately) and the shifting audience of the web likely made it easier to get away with a lot of this stuff.

GuiA 9y ago
Yes. The web didn’t get “dumbed down”; it got more diverse. This is a very good thing. The issue is that technologists insist on making a clear distinction between the “user” and the “developer”. If you hide the number of web requests away in an obscure, borderline illegible, “developer tools” pane, is it a surprise that the average user has no idea about what is going on in their browser? No one is interested about building a browser, or even an operating system for that matter, that focuses on making things understandable, learnable. That is part of the reason why we end up in situations like the ones described in the article. Regarding differences in intelligence, that is not a particularly relevant point here. People have differences (plural) in intelligences (plural). Even one person has diffferences in intelligences throughout their life at many different scales - I was much better at physics back in college than I am now because I practiced it more, and yet I wouldn’t say I was more intelligent 10 years ago than I am now even though I could solve physics problems faster. There are even pretty big fluctuations in my intelligence in a single day based on how tired/frustrated I am, if I have concerns at the back of my mind, etc. All of these statements aren’t really relevant here, because we have systems that deliberately obfuscate how they work, which is a much bigger problem.
- QuadrupleA 9y ago
  So more "users" should be developers? And some idealized Chrome dev tools should be shown to everybody by default? That's the kind of techy, unix-y shit that turned off average people from the early web in the first place. Turning that stuff off and hiding it is what made things like the iPhone so popular. Most people aren't interested in learning about HTTP, security certificates, javascript AJAX requests etc., no matter how "learnable" the browsers could make them. It's just irrelevant to chatting with your kids or reading about what happened in the Dodgers game. Geeky tech people will seek that stuff out, average people won't.

GuiA 9y ago

Yes. The web didn’t get “dumbed down”; it got more diverse. This is a very good thing. The issue is that technologists insist on making a clear distinction between the “user” and the “developer”. If you hide the number of web requests away in an obscure, borderline illegible, “developer tools” pane, is it a surprise that the average user has no idea about what is going on in their browser? No one is interested about building a browser, or even an operating system for that matter, that focuses on making things understandable, learnable. That is part of the reason why we end up in situations like the ones described in the article. Regarding differences in intelligence, that is not a particularly relevant point here. People have differences (plural) in intelligences (plural). Even one person has diffferences in intelligences throughout their life at many different scales - I was much better at physics back in college than I am now because I practiced it more, and yet I wouldn’t say I was more intelligent 10 years ago than I am now even though I could solve physics problems faster. There are even pretty big fluctuations in my intelligence in a single day based on how tired/frustrated I am, if I have concerns at the back of my mind, etc. All of these statements aren’t really relevant here, because we have systems that deliberately obfuscate how they work, which is a much bigger problem.

QuadrupleA 9y ago
So more "users" should be developers? And some idealized Chrome dev tools should be shown to everybody by default? That's the kind of techy, unix-y shit that turned off average people from the early web in the first place. Turning that stuff off and hiding it is what made things like the iPhone so popular. Most people aren't interested in learning about HTTP, security certificates, javascript AJAX requests etc., no matter how "learnable" the browsers could make them. It's just irrelevant to chatting with your kids or reading about what happened in the Dodgers game. Geeky tech people will seek that stuff out, average people won't.