2 ms·

Reimagining the Web

1 points by igravious 16y ago

A thought struck me in my media theory class today. Imagine if you had a chance to build the web from the ground up. I could imagine baking in anonymity from the ground up. I could imagine a text-only interface so that the sight-impaired could have universal text to speech access. I could imagine some kind of identity management baked-in that would ensure privacy and remove the need for OpenID and creating login after login. What I'm trying to say is. Imagine if you had the chance to design the Web✝ from the scratch. How would you go about it? There was a discussion today on this site about a universal bytecode instead of Javascript, the one scripting language. Imagine if it was text only, how would that affect HTML5. What would the "browser" of this new space look like? What sort of development and debugging tools would be built-in? Would it be more peer-to-peer and Tor-like? Go wild, I want to hear all your ideas! Would you change DNS? Would you change how ICANN works? How about a flat-fee subscription model that would remove the need for advertising? These are just "out there" ideas, I'd like to hear yours. ✝(Just the web, not the internet - I think the internet with IPv6 is fine, the internet is just numbers and pipes, it aint broken apart from the finite resources of IPv4 as far as I can see.)

madhouse 16y ago
> I could imagine a text-only interface so that the sight-impaired could have universal text to speech access. Gopher says hi. Also, how does baked in anonymity mix with identity management? Can't really have both at the same time, and having to switch kinda defeats the point of having either baked in. The Web, as it is, is good enough: it has a way to evolve, like it evolved from the first days, through blink tags, animated gifs and java applets, to flash and html5. Quite a long way. And the sign of a good design is that it can evolve fairly painlessly. The web, as far as I see, is very close to that goal. Certainly, a few things could be improved, there were great mistakes made, but you can't fix that without fixing the internet itself, as a whole.

Reimagining the Web

1 points by igravious 16y ago

madhouse 16y ago

> I could imagine a text-only interface so that the sight-impaired could have universal text to speech access. Gopher says hi. Also, how does baked in anonymity mix with identity management? Can't really have both at the same time, and having to switch kinda defeats the point of having either baked in. The Web, as it is, is good enough: it has a way to evolve, like it evolved from the first days, through blink tags, animated gifs and java applets, to flash and html5. Quite a long way. And the sign of a good design is that it can evolve fairly painlessly. The web, as far as I see, is very close to that goal. Certainly, a few things could be improved, there were great mistakes made, but you can't fix that without fixing the internet itself, as a whole.