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Sorry, I forgot about the mentality here for a second. I will spell out the point I was trying to make through provocation. It destroys the fun/joke, but whatev
by TelmoMenezes 7y ago
Sorry, I forgot about the mentality here for a second. I will spell out the point I was trying to make through provocation. It destroys the fun/joke, but whatever...
The Web was invented a few meters away from the EU, in a lab that literally sits in the border between the EU and a non-EU country that is mostly aligned with the EU, by a EU citizen, funded mostly by EU money, is the only reason why anyone cares about the rest of the technology stack and infrastructure that we call "Internet". It was a dream of creating an interconnected system of knowledge and communication, that transcended borders and would move humanity to a higher stage of civilization.
The Web matters because of what it allows one to do, the implementation details are only relevant in a narrow technical sense.
I have the utmost respect and admiration for many American achievements, and I grew up thinking that the USA and Europe were close friends and allies, fundamentally sharing the same values. NASA and its many achievements inspired my lifelong interest in Science.
I am not nationalistic, and I don't care how invented what. What I am fed up with, is this USA-centric view of the world, as if freedom emanates from the USA, without whom we would be condemned to vile authoritarianism. I am also fed up with the idea that invention comes from VC money, which is largely untrue. Even the Internet as you describe it was invented using government money.
- dredmorbius 7y agoNationalism really has nothing to do with my response. A fully-admitted-in-advance pedantic sense of accuracy does. The Web is significant. I'm well aware of its history, and the (yes, publicly-funded) Arpanet and Internet. But the WWW not the whole 'Net, and other than some path-dependent accidents of history (see Meredith L. Patterson's "On Port 80" https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a) would probably be subsiding now largely due to mobile tech. Designed in Cupertino, built in China. (And likely designed in China before much longer). The point remains that TFA talks of partitioning the Internet, not merely the Web, via mostly Internet-specific, not Web-specific, mechanisms. Cheers.
- kitotik 7y agoI actually intended to type “splinternet” but I think due to years of dadjoke “interweb” muscle memory typed something else.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSplintertubes!