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Thank you Dave Winer for creating RSS. For a while there, it seemed like we were on a path of making all data free, a truly decentralized web of information. I

by Udo 7y ago

Thank you Dave Winer for creating RSS. For a while there, it seemed like we were on a path of making all data free, a truly decentralized web of information. I wish the internet would have continued on that route.

pknerd 7y ago
We can still get on track provided we do not get fascinated with Data Silos in the name of Social Media.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Unfortunately "data silos" are very convenient to end users, and also allow them to easily discover new content - which solves the main problem of the distributed content, the bad discoverability.
  - hhas01 7y ago
    HTTP hyperlinks FTF. Vannevar Bush hypothesized much a higher-level “mesh of associative trails”, with relationships formed directly and largely automatically. The closest today’s WWW has gotten to this is search engines, but again these are centralized, controlled, and first and foremost in service to vendor, not users. However, I would argue a far greater problem was the early lack of editability; Berners-Lee originally conceived of his WWW as a network of editable documents, where every user could read and write with equal ease. His prototype web browser was, to use a desktop analogy, a “Word for the Web”; a true web editor, Opening and Saving documents stored online, just as Microsoft Word directly opens and saves documents stored locally. But Tim got lazy and impatient, and shipped his first public browser as a cut-down web viewer. Which Mosaic then copied; and, before anyone knew any different, the web was recast as a read-only medium of the masses, with web editing the exclusive domain of technical and corporate elites only. A single thoughtless corner-cutting mistake, creating an artificial bottleneck upon which trillion-dollar global empires have now been built. You can still see the remnants of the original direct interaction model in HTTP’s PUT and DELETE verbs, like the hindlimbs in a blue whale, rendered just as powerless from the ignorance and avarice of this new web’s Intelligent Design. Tony Hoare named NULL his billion-dollar mistake, but that’s a rounding error on the scale of TBL’s fuckup. As for Dave Winer? Best and worst, maybe a couple of Benjamins.
bb101 7y ago
I use RSS multiple times a day through Feedly and Reeder. It is anything but dead.
- krick 7y ago
  Uh, sorta, kinda, I guess... It is a lot less alive than it should and could have been. Sure, you can set up your own web-server, install RSS reader on your phone and use RSS as a protocol to get updates of your cat coming in and out or whatever. But essentially all the major services heavily discourage its usage for the majority of users.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    You're both right. Sure, you can use Feedly quite easily and a lot of sites, blogs, etc. still generate RSS feeds. On the other hand, it's not really a first-class citizen, it's not available on major services that want eyeballs, subscription fees, etc. And, frankly, a lot of us have just mostly gotten out of the habit of using it because we figure we'll learn about most interesting or important stuff on social media in some manner.
    - fouc 7y ago
      Perhaps we need to splinter the internet. A second-citizen only internet. A separate internet with strict open web considerations, federated protocols, rss, irc, or new updated things.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        Isn't that kinda what we have? You can write web apps rather than mobile apps, publish on open source publishing platforms, use IRC, use RSS, etc. Yes, there may be discoverability and other downsides but nothing is actually preventing you from avoiding walled gardens for the most part.
        fouc 7y ago
davewiner 7y ago
Thank you for the kind words. RSS is still a robust format with lots of news flowing through it, so we did accomplish something. And the pendulum is always swinging, so I think we may find the open web useful still, esp when the big tech companies like Google move on. ;-)

by Udo 7y ago

pknerd 7y ago

We can still get on track provided we do not get fascinated with Data Silos in the name of Social Media.

ivanhoe 7y ago
Unfortunately "data silos" are very convenient to end users, and also allow them to easily discover new content - which solves the main problem of the distributed content, the bad discoverability.
- hhas01 7y ago
  HTTP hyperlinks FTF. Vannevar Bush hypothesized much a higher-level “mesh of associative trails”, with relationships formed directly and largely automatically. The closest today’s WWW has gotten to this is search engines, but again these are centralized, controlled, and first and foremost in service to vendor, not users. However, I would argue a far greater problem was the early lack of editability; Berners-Lee originally conceived of his WWW as a network of editable documents, where every user could read and write with equal ease. His prototype web browser was, to use a desktop analogy, a “Word for the Web”; a true web editor, Opening and Saving documents stored online, just as Microsoft Word directly opens and saves documents stored locally. But Tim got lazy and impatient, and shipped his first public browser as a cut-down web viewer. Which Mosaic then copied; and, before anyone knew any different, the web was recast as a read-only medium of the masses, with web editing the exclusive domain of technical and corporate elites only. A single thoughtless corner-cutting mistake, creating an artificial bottleneck upon which trillion-dollar global empires have now been built. You can still see the remnants of the original direct interaction model in HTTP’s PUT and DELETE verbs, like the hindlimbs in a blue whale, rendered just as powerless from the ignorance and avarice of this new web’s Intelligent Design. Tony Hoare named NULL his billion-dollar mistake, but that’s a rounding error on the scale of TBL’s fuckup. As for Dave Winer? Best and worst, maybe a couple of Benjamins.

bb101 7y ago

I use RSS multiple times a day through Feedly and Reeder. It is anything but dead.

krick 7y ago
Uh, sorta, kinda, I guess... It is a lot less alive than it should and could have been. Sure, you can set up your own web-server, install RSS reader on your phone and use RSS as a protocol to get updates of your cat coming in and out or whatever. But essentially all the major services heavily discourage its usage for the majority of users.
- ghaff 7y ago
  You're both right. Sure, you can use Feedly quite easily and a lot of sites, blogs, etc. still generate RSS feeds. On the other hand, it's not really a first-class citizen, it's not available on major services that want eyeballs, subscription fees, etc. And, frankly, a lot of us have just mostly gotten out of the habit of using it because we figure we'll learn about most interesting or important stuff on social media in some manner.
  - fouc 7y ago
    Perhaps we need to splinter the internet. A second-citizen only internet. A separate internet with strict open web considerations, federated protocols, rss, irc, or new updated things.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Isn't that kinda what we have? You can write web apps rather than mobile apps, publish on open source publishing platforms, use IRC, use RSS, etc. Yes, there may be discoverability and other downsides but nothing is actually preventing you from avoiding walled gardens for the most part.
      - fouc 7y ago

davewiner 7y ago

Thank you for the kind words. RSS is still a robust format with lots of news flowing through it, so we did accomplish something. And the pendulum is always swinging, so I think we may find the open web useful still, esp when the big tech companies like Google move on. ;-)