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Do we really want to continue having "a web" ? Remember, "the web" was never designed for what we do with it today. If you're thinking of overhauling "the web",

Do we really want to continue having "a web" ? Remember, "the web" was never designed for what we do with it today. If you're thinking of overhauling "the web", I think it makes sense to start from first principles, and build something that meets today's needs with the least amount of unnecessary bullshit. You have to start from the user's experience, because nothing else matters about a computer other than what you use it for. What do people actually want to do with a computer? It's going to be very hard to throw away all your assumptions. Don't assume that they want or need what we have today. They may not need the internet, or even a visual interface. After you understand the problems the user wants solved, then you can go about building products that address those needs. You may think technology is clay that we can shape to fit a user's needs; but what if what they were best served by was metal, or glass, or paper? We must look through all technological mediums and components to provide the best solution. Many of the developers today literally have never lived their lives in a world without certain inherent technological expectations and limitations. We need to open their minds and show them that they really can make literally anything with technology, and that it doesn't have to resemble anything that we have today. If you think "oh but we can't make change too radical, it wouldn't work", that's what they said before we ended up with the technology of today! The only box you're limited to is the one you put yourself in.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rektide 5y ago
What feels unique about the web, that nothing else remotely resembles that makes it so much more compelling to me versus everything which came before, is urls. The web is a network of online resources. There's HTML, an ok, fairly adaptable hyper-media markup- and CSS, and scripts, all fair or better- but the premise turns everything else we do in computing on it's head: servers send us resources, and we have a (imo pretty great) engine to render & execute our hypermedia. I see endless torrents of anti-web attitude, from people who want more content-centric systems, from people who want applications. But almost never can the critics identify & mark out what makes the web better, different, & so flexible as to have arisen into all-pervading ubiquitous. By all means, consider first principles. I think you all have a lot of very important & enabling concepts you'll need to recreate along the way. The web's idea of urls & resources is one I think we'll have a hard time replacing.
- zzo38computer 5y ago
  While there are some good ideas, there are also many bad ones. (URLs are one good idea.) It could be designed better. Perhaps I can mention this quotation (which wasn't about HTML, although some of the bad things happen with HTML for similar reasons): The sad fact of the matter is that people play politics with standards to gain commercial advantage, and the result is that end users suffer the consequences. This is the case with character encoding for computer systems, and it is even more the case with HDTV.
  - rektide 5y ago
    It mostly works pretty great. It's immensely popular to hate on.
EddieDante 5y ago
> Do we really want to continue having "a web"? Speaking only for myself, I'm not at all invested in having a website. Yes, I want a publicly accessible site of my own on the internet with which to share documents, and I currently do so over HTTP, but I would equally happy to share them over Gopher or even anonymous FTP. However, I'd rather pay NearlyFreeSpeech.net for hosting than run my own VPS or self-host on a machine in my basement because I'm lazy, so I'm stuck with HTTP because they explicitly don't support anonymous FTP (and by implication don't support Gopher or Gemini).
- bruce511 5y ago
  You want a publically accessible place for your public persona. You have got that. Why do you care about the protocol it uses? Why would you prefer a protocol that no one else uses? That no one has a client for?
  - EddieDante 5y ago
    The fact that I want to is reason enough for me. Why does that bother you? Am I somehow harming you?
- zzo38computer 5y ago
  I dislike FTP and think that it is not a very good protocol. (There is one advantage of FTP over HTTP, which is that it has directory listings, although you could also do with HTTP possibly by a new file format (e.g. application/httpdirlist) for directory listings.) You can serve other file formats (including text/gemini) over HTTP. Although I could manage to make the web browser I have to support text/gemini files over HTTP (and local files), this isn't commonly done, and the protocol does not support file format polyfills (although I have a proposal that can make it work). However, that isn't good enough if you want to serve NNTP or IRC or Telnet or something else like that. If I want to serve discussion forums, I will want NNTP. If I want fast communications, I will want IRC. There may be other possible protocols too. We shouldn't force everything into HTTP(S); it doesn't fit properly. (I do have a NNTP server, as well as HTTP and Gopher.)
brabel 5y ago
> If you think "oh but we can't make change too radical, it wouldn't work", that's what they said before we ended up with the technology of today! No, the technology of today developed extremely slowly for the most part, it evolved in tiny, tiny steps, sometimes taking centuries.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rektide 5y ago

What feels unique about the web, that nothing else remotely resembles that makes it so much more compelling to me versus everything which came before, is urls. The web is a network of online resources. There's HTML, an ok, fairly adaptable hyper-media markup- and CSS, and scripts, all fair or better- but the premise turns everything else we do in computing on it's head: servers send us resources, and we have a (imo pretty great) engine to render & execute our hypermedia. I see endless torrents of anti-web attitude, from people who want more content-centric systems, from people who want applications. But almost never can the critics identify & mark out what makes the web better, different, & so flexible as to have arisen into all-pervading ubiquitous. By all means, consider first principles. I think you all have a lot of very important & enabling concepts you'll need to recreate along the way. The web's idea of urls & resources is one I think we'll have a hard time replacing.

zzo38computer 5y ago
While there are some good ideas, there are also many bad ones. (URLs are one good idea.) It could be designed better. Perhaps I can mention this quotation (which wasn't about HTML, although some of the bad things happen with HTML for similar reasons): The sad fact of the matter is that people play politics with standards to gain commercial advantage, and the result is that end users suffer the consequences. This is the case with character encoding for computer systems, and it is even more the case with HDTV.
- rektide 5y ago
  It mostly works pretty great. It's immensely popular to hate on.

EddieDante 5y ago

> Do we really want to continue having "a web"? Speaking only for myself, I'm not at all invested in having a website. Yes, I want a publicly accessible site of my own on the internet with which to share documents, and I currently do so over HTTP, but I would equally happy to share them over Gopher or even anonymous FTP. However, I'd rather pay NearlyFreeSpeech.net for hosting than run my own VPS or self-host on a machine in my basement because I'm lazy, so I'm stuck with HTTP because they explicitly don't support anonymous FTP (and by implication don't support Gopher or Gemini).

bruce511 5y ago
You want a publically accessible place for your public persona. You have got that. Why do you care about the protocol it uses? Why would you prefer a protocol that no one else uses? That no one has a client for?
- EddieDante 5y ago
  The fact that I want to is reason enough for me. Why does that bother you? Am I somehow harming you?
zzo38computer 5y ago
I dislike FTP and think that it is not a very good protocol. (There is one advantage of FTP over HTTP, which is that it has directory listings, although you could also do with HTTP possibly by a new file format (e.g. application/httpdirlist) for directory listings.) You can serve other file formats (including text/gemini) over HTTP. Although I could manage to make the web browser I have to support text/gemini files over HTTP (and local files), this isn't commonly done, and the protocol does not support file format polyfills (although I have a proposal that can make it work). However, that isn't good enough if you want to serve NNTP or IRC or Telnet or something else like that. If I want to serve discussion forums, I will want NNTP. If I want fast communications, I will want IRC. There may be other possible protocols too. We shouldn't force everything into HTTP(S); it doesn't fit properly. (I do have a NNTP server, as well as HTTP and Gopher.)

brabel 5y ago

> If you think "oh but we can't make change too radical, it wouldn't work", that's what they said before we ended up with the technology of today! No, the technology of today developed extremely slowly for the most part, it evolved in tiny, tiny steps, sometimes taking centuries.