3 ms·

The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. The incredi

by wahern 5y ago

The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. The incredible increase in the complexity of the modern internet has almost completely restored that fundamental distinction, if not made it deeper and wider, giving rise to publishers (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) and other media companies (e.g. Google) with powers we haven't seen for over a century, if ever.

Jtsummers 5y ago
> The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. Where does this idea come from?
- wahern 5y ago
  From the 1990s and, to a lesser degree, early 2000s internet culture--both the zeitgest and scholarship. I'd post links but ever since Google began heavily favoring publication date over keyword and semantic matching I've found it difficult and often impossible (not for lack of trying) to find the various websites, manifestos, blogs, and magazine articles that I read and re-read back then. One of my favorite manifestos was about the issue of [the non-existence of] spectrum scarcity, which also hashed out the threat posed by the reimposition of a strong publisher/consumer dichotomy. Alas, I haven't been able to find it again in the past several years. These days whenever I come across a good article (my metric is an article I return to at least once, either to re-read or cite) I archive the link. Google is now useless for finding anything but the most recent content, and headed in that same direction when it comes to finding substantive content. Another object lesson in the perils of centralization and technological reliance.
- weikju 5y ago
  https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html > The first web browser - or browser-editor rather > ... https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/worldwideweb/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/worldwideweb/ > Editing > To edit any document, whether it's one you created, or a page on the world wide web: > Click on the text you want edit. > Edit it.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. I disagree. I do _not_ equate a "publisher" with a "developer". I'd much rather see a world where publishers are _not_ developers. It's not like all the books I read are written by developers.
- wahern 5y ago
  A developer is analogous to publisher because of the deep publisher/consumer dichotomy. Complexity favors scale, scale requires capital; similarly, complexity favors specialized skills (e.g. developers), which require capital. Of course, publishers are not actually the same as developers. Few Facebook engineers consider themselves publishers. Heck, Facebook doesn't consider itself a publisher--in the contemporary context a publisher would be a media platform (or "technology" platform). But it's publishers who pay developers, and it's often developers who seek to find themselves in the role of publisher, building their walled gardens, through their startups. Similarly, both publisher and developer are active roles, whereas user and consumer are passive--they exist as largely distinct roles with one primarily existing to enrich the other in exchange for entertainment. The original promise was in many ways overly simplistic. For one thing, scientists (e.g. CERN scientists) were much better positioned to acquire and utilize certain technical skills as an ancillary part of their job. But the ultimate belief was that by eliding the distinction between publisher and consumer, the erstwhile consumers would be empowered and the erstwhile publishers disempowered. The concern was, as it remains today, about relative control over both the media and the message. It many important ways it's still relatively simple as an absolute matter to throw up a simple HTML site. But the opportunity costs are different, and so we self-sort ourselves into traditional roles. In that way the original promise was even more naive in believing that roles wouldn't bifurcate in a manner similar to how they historically had been. Also, suffice it to say that there are still huge markets where developers work building systems not directly related to publishing. But it's the publishers and their ecosystems that are driving most modern software systems, and they drive those systems in directions that are rarely well suited for the needs of everybody else. Rather, those systems are optimized for a network where media platforms push out highly sophisticated content and users are still largely passive consumers notwithstanding the interactive, social aspect.

by wahern 5y ago

Jtsummers 5y ago

> The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. Where does this idea come from?

wahern 5y ago
From the 1990s and, to a lesser degree, early 2000s internet culture--both the zeitgest and scholarship. I'd post links but ever since Google began heavily favoring publication date over keyword and semantic matching I've found it difficult and often impossible (not for lack of trying) to find the various websites, manifestos, blogs, and magazine articles that I read and re-read back then. One of my favorite manifestos was about the issue of [the non-existence of] spectrum scarcity, which also hashed out the threat posed by the reimposition of a strong publisher/consumer dichotomy. Alas, I haven't been able to find it again in the past several years. These days whenever I come across a good article (my metric is an article I return to at least once, either to re-read or cite) I archive the link. Google is now useless for finding anything but the most recent content, and headed in that same direction when it comes to finding substantive content. Another object lesson in the perils of centralization and technological reliance.
weikju 5y ago
https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html > The first web browser - or browser-editor rather > ... https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/worldwideweb/ https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/worldwideweb/ > Editing > To edit any document, whether it's one you created, or a page on the world wide web: > Click on the text you want edit. > Edit it.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

> The original promise of the Internet and, especially, the WWW was to elide the distinction between publisher and consumer--i.e. developer and user. I disagree. I do _not_ equate a "publisher" with a "developer". I'd much rather see a world where publishers are _not_ developers. It's not like all the books I read are written by developers.

wahern 5y ago
A developer is analogous to publisher because of the deep publisher/consumer dichotomy. Complexity favors scale, scale requires capital; similarly, complexity favors specialized skills (e.g. developers), which require capital. Of course, publishers are not actually the same as developers. Few Facebook engineers consider themselves publishers. Heck, Facebook doesn't consider itself a publisher--in the contemporary context a publisher would be a media platform (or "technology" platform). But it's publishers who pay developers, and it's often developers who seek to find themselves in the role of publisher, building their walled gardens, through their startups. Similarly, both publisher and developer are active roles, whereas user and consumer are passive--they exist as largely distinct roles with one primarily existing to enrich the other in exchange for entertainment. The original promise was in many ways overly simplistic. For one thing, scientists (e.g. CERN scientists) were much better positioned to acquire and utilize certain technical skills as an ancillary part of their job. But the ultimate belief was that by eliding the distinction between publisher and consumer, the erstwhile consumers would be empowered and the erstwhile publishers disempowered. The concern was, as it remains today, about relative control over both the media and the message. It many important ways it's still relatively simple as an absolute matter to throw up a simple HTML site. But the opportunity costs are different, and so we self-sort ourselves into traditional roles. In that way the original promise was even more naive in believing that roles wouldn't bifurcate in a manner similar to how they historically had been. Also, suffice it to say that there are still huge markets where developers work building systems not directly related to publishing. But it's the publishers and their ecosystems that are driving most modern software systems, and they drive those systems in directions that are rarely well suited for the needs of everybody else. Rather, those systems are optimized for a network where media platforms push out highly sophisticated content and users are still largely passive consumers notwithstanding the interactive, social aspect.