27 ms·

What is the web revival?

170 points by spansoa 4y ago

hirundo 4y ago
This is what the world looked like when it felt safe/exciting/mysterious, maybe I'll feel that way now if I make it look like that again. For me that world is in the seventies, not the nineties. I want a psychedelic not a web revival.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  microdosing is VC backed now! aren’t you thrilled?! :/
scyclow 4y ago
It makes me very happy to know that all of these websites exist. It also makes me sad to see unnecessary hostility towards crypto. I get it: most NFTs are hyper commercialized trash, and they're in direct opposition to the values outlined in this article. But there's also so much weird, non-commercialized crypto stuff out there that shares a lot of the ethos of early web tinkerers.
- meowkit 4y ago
  Reading the yesterweb criticism page of crypto/web3 that is linked to by the OP makes me think this movement is not going to gain much momentum. The criticism is somewhat accurate, but extremely shallow and makes no attempt to steel man potential benefits. Not that I expect this to land well with the HN crowd, but web3/crypto has the tyrannical effects of capitalism/growth on its side as a force for the “future of the web”. Going up against that with the non-profit model seems… quaint.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO."
    - scyclow 4y ago
      I'm looking forward to the NFT bear market where Ethereum moves to Proof of Stake, and people realize that unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them.
      - Fargoan 4y ago
        We already do that on Tezos
      - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
        > unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them. There's no such thing as a "unique digital asset". Networked computers are good at sharing copies. Any developments against this nature are manufactured, artificial scarcity, for the gains of the controlling party, at the expense of everyone else; and probably in the name of security. If you like them so much I can roll a die and tell only you which number I got, but that wouldn't affect the world in any way unless we're gambling, nor make it any less "unique" than crypto - it's just more bits/dice.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO." The answer is "Yes, but at a cost". One must subsidise the parasitic nature of digital capitalism. Many of the comments here are about the style or mechanisms of the web, but don't talk much about the values - which are sharing. The object is to give some value to the world, sharing a little of the creation you do. I've set up websites with HOWTO essays, code examples, mp3 files of sound effects I collected, interesting images etc. In the early days it was popular and well regarded amongst a music coding community, but within 10 years it was inoperable. Bots crawling all over it constantly sucked the life out of the server, and literally tens of thousands of parasitic links from commercial entities, spamdexers and SEO trash attached themselves. My site was like a ship dragged down by barnacles and weeds. When I shut down the site I got angry emails from entitled assholes who had embedded sound effects in their applications by linking to my site as if it were an infinite free resource. This story has been told a million times by people who set up websites for fun in the 90s and 00s, and pulled them down after realising the cost (often in time spent reading logs, defending, blocking, banning, rate-limiting etc) What is to be done? In the digital world capitalism does not create value but extracts or appropriates it from creators. To be a digital creator means paying a constant tax to support those who want to make money from you. While cryptocurrency type Web3.0 seems to offer a solution it only fights fire with fire, wrapping the web in a framework of mutual extraction and appropriation. Ultimately I think that only plays into the hands of the extractors who will use it to find ever more effective ways to thrive as parasites.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > But there's also so much weird, non-commercialized crypto stuff out there that shares a lot of the ethos of early web tinkerers. Bullshit. Without miners there's no "crypto" and without payouts there's no miners. So "web3" can only exist where there's some financial incentive to run miners. Users can't spend real money to access this system so they need to convert their money to Geoffrey dollars to even access "web3" content. This is 180° from the "old web". End users needed no more investment than their computer and Internet connection. They didn't have to prop up some asshole's upline to check out the Unofficial X-Files Fan Page.
  - scyclow 4y ago
    > So "web3" can only exist where there's some financial incentive to run miners. I can say the same about anything else on the internet. Keeping the servers running costs money > Users can't spend real money to access this system so they need to convert their money to Geoffrey dollars to even access "web3" content. You can actually access most web3 content without spending Geoffrey dollars, or US Dollars. If we're talking about public blockchains like Ethereum, it's all out in the open. By definition, it's a public ledger. IPFS data (which has nothing to do with crypto) is also very public. > End users needed no more investment than their computer and Internet connection. I guess some web3 websites require you to connect with a wallet, but downloading a browser extension doesn't seem very prohibitive.
    - DebtDeflation 4y ago
      What problem is web3 even trying to solve? As it stands today I can conduct commerce over the web, pay for access to content directly, or have free content that is advertising supported. Having to connect with a wallet and spend some specialized cryptocurrency to access a website provides what benefit? It seems like a solution chasing a problem like literally everything else crypto related.
      - scyclow 4y ago
        I think the main class of problems it solves is it lets multiple applications, which may be developed by completely different entities at different times, share data with very strong guarantees. So in the context of the Web Revivalist movement, how do you build stateful applications? It's great when individuals host their own DIY servers, but that doesn't really give you much stability. And in aggregate, it's even more difficult to build rich, stateful ecosystems of applications. How do you handle servers going down and APIs changing? Link rot for stateless websites is a hard enough as it is.
- MrAwesome 4y ago
  I am not aware of any non-commercialized crypto anything (from my understanding, this is sorta by definition, but maybe I'm missing something). Do you have any examples?
  - voldacar 4y ago
    Monero isn't commercialized. It's just a currency that people actually use for transactions, not a product.
    - MrAwesome 4y ago
      A currency is generally intended mainly for commercial purposes, isn't it? I think the word commercialized isn't quite right for what I mean then. So more specifically, I mean: "not for the purpose of creating or transferring monetary value, and not requiring the expenditure of money to create/send the amount of data necessary to host a simple plaintext/html page"
      - voldacar 4y ago
        I was assuming you meant things like NFTs or smart contracts, i.e. commercial products that live on a blockchain
  - scyclow 4y ago
    The Worm is a really fun one. The idea is that you transfer the worm NFT from wallet to wallet (it's "trying to visit every wallet on the Ethereum blockchain"), and it leaves a non-transferrable token wherever it's been. To my knowledge, it's been transferred about 750 times without anyone selling it. https://theworm.wtf/ https://theworm.wtf/ Another cool one is minting amulets. You write a poem, and if the hash of that poem has an amulet in it (four or more consecutive 8s), then you can mint it as a token for your collection. But you can't mint the same hashed poem twice https://text.bargains/collection/ https://text.bargains/collection/ I also met someone once who gave me (and everyone he meets) an NFT from an RFID chip implanted in his hand. That was pretty whacky.
- civilized 4y ago
  Crypto is about making sure the supply of something stays limited. Seems pretty contradictory to the spirit of free creative expression the Web Revival is going for.
  - scyclow 4y ago
    I think they solve different problems. I love independent websites, and the web is an amazing medium for serving stateless content. But I think web3 compliments it really well when you want to do something that hooks into a larger, stateful ecosystem.
    - civilized 4y ago
      I'm sure you can think of a much simpler way of doing stateful things with networked computers than crypto.
      - scyclow 4y ago
        I think it really depends on what you want to do. If you want build a comment system for your website, then web3 is totally the wrong tool for the job. If you want to write an application that coordinates data across multiple websites, and you're worried about servers going down or APIs changing, then it's a little trickier to think of a simpler way.
  - tjstebbing 4y ago
    Except for instance something like Dogecoin that is the direct opposite of what you're saying?
    - civilized 4y ago
      The supply of dogecoins is increasing but still strictly limited at any given time. They're not like artwork that can be copied and shared by anyone.
- jancsika 4y ago
  Most importantly-- it shares the foundational feature of having such a small publishing cost that it creates a paradigm shift in how we are able to self-organize. That's one thing that bothered and confused the cranks with burgeoning Wikipedia. Why does the Pokemon article have a longer page than one on the Vietnam War? The priorities are out of wack, they thought, without realizing that the lack of scarcity in a web page (well, technically a scroll) and low friction of revisions ends up changing the process of editing an encyclopedia for length. It's similar for Bitcoin. Cranks on HN always want to to downplay it's 3-orders-of-magnitude superior transaction speed to Visa/Mastercard by pointing out the much smaller value being transacted. One million microtransactions for a grand total of $1000, they say, without realizing that it's the types of transactions these (often automated) payments support which simply aren't possible using the old payment paradigm. Without the scale and speed of microtransactions Bitcoin makes possible, you don't just end up with a less effective National Association of Independent Investigative Units. Games in Geocities 2 don't just get a little bit laggy. FOSSmobiles don't just take a little longer to update their FOSStertainment panels. You simply end up with a world where none of that stuff exists. Oh wait I forgot Bitcoin doesn't work like that. Still, we've got Sci-hub donations and that one ransomware that apparently donates to charities. So not so different, really.
  - Fargoan 4y ago
    You can do that with Lightning Network
Semiapies 4y ago
I support more people having websites, if only to make it harder for people to pretend it's revolutionary and special to do so.
- Volker_W 4y ago
  I have never heard anyone claiming that having a website is revolutionary and special.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    My charitable read of the comment here might be: the only culturally acknowledged web presence today is that of the Platform -- and when the platforms are so monopoly-adjacent, the skills necessary to build a planet scale platform really are pretty cutting-edge and rarefied [1]. But there's nothing about making a website of your own that requires that -- so ordinary people ought to feel like they can attempt it on their own without a Platform in control. [1]. inb4 "but if we'd all just stuck to monospaced plain text without executable scripts, none of that would have been necessary!"
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      It’s probably easier to set up a ‘planet scale’ website now than it was to set up a website in the 90’s. Setting up a VM like lightsail and hooking up a CDN is pretty straightforward. Setting up a serverless site is even easier.
    - Semiapies 4y ago
      That's sort of part of it. On the one hand, I'm absolutely for anyone with the urge to go out and build a web site, just like I'm the same way about someone wanting to write. If all they find out is that they don't actually like doing it, then hey, they're still ahead. On the other hand, I'm tired of the goofy fetishizing of the early, rather exclusive and limited web wrapped up in a copy-and-paste rant about social media and how this is some bold alternative to teh corporations. The talking about people who just have websites as if they've rejected modern society and gone off to live in communes in the wilderness...it's just deeply weird, and it's probably best killed by more people considering making a website a perfectly normal and doable thing. Then, of course, we'll probably have much of the same enthusiasts bemoaning all the "terrible" websites by the wrong sorts of people.
AlexandrB 4y ago
There's a great video[1] on VRChat and how its current state seems to encapsulate a lot of the article's ethos but for emerging metaverse tech. I suspect that if Meta is successful with their metaverse efforts it will be a repeat of the Geocities -> Facebook transition. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ
- hifikuno 4y ago
  I watched this video not long ago and realized I had sorely misjudged the VRChat community. I had only ever experienced the public community and I just assumed that is all there was to VRChat. I had no idea that such meaningful and dedicated communities existed in private. I feel like I should fire up the 'ol headset again and go looking once more.
ajxs 4y ago
I recently completed work on a small hobby project to support the small-web revival. It's a webring hosting platform. Unfortunately I haven't really had the time available to promote it. I don't expect it to really gather too much traction, however there's definitely been a bit of a revival of webrings! https://webri.ng/ https://webri.ng/ Once I'd purchased that domain, I simply had to do something with it!
- mrec 4y ago
  You might want to start your FAQ by saying what a webring is. Not everyone was around in the late 90s.
  - ajxs 4y ago
    Thank you for the great suggestion! I'll take that on board and add something to the FAQ.
    - Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
      And most importantly why it’s relevant today. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t, I just don’t know and would like to find out.
      - moffkalast 4y ago
        From what I can tell it's websites that link to each other with a similar theme. I mean, isn't that just what site pages are except on multiple servers for some reason?
        aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        "You may be interested in" sort of theme, not necessarily the same topic. The intention is to get you to jump domains, hoping you'll bookmark the ones you want to explore more fully later.
- rr808 4y ago
AlexDragusin 4y ago
I am also working towards this direction at Relevanto[1]. Encouraging the exploratory way of stumbling upon the good stuff. Lots of work but it's worth it. [1] https://www.relevanto.com https://www.relevanto.com
- curious-im 4y ago
  Wanted some news, opened Citizen Free Press from News Aggregators. Transgender rapists, drag queen story hour, antivax, soy boys, democrats supports killing babies. Comments also delivering "Relevanto was created to provide access to quality resources." Yep, cool...
  - AlexDragusin 4y ago
    I see where you're coming from and surely understand your point. It's good that you are able to tell some of these things apart. Now think how did you get to this point, likely by being exposed to various views so that's a good thing and should be encouraged. Especially with some of the more polarizing matters, one should be aware of other views. One cannot develop a sense of things by living in a bubble, in fact I'd argue that the society is seemingly more polarized because of these bubbles, the general avoidance to be exposed to opposing views and consider the reasonings objectively but that's a discussion for another place and time :)
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
the closest thing i found is .. github. You even have a "definitive list of lists (of lists)" https://github.com/jnv/lists https://github.com/jnv/lists You can find lots of foo by searching for "list of foo" on github search. https://github.com/search?q=list+of+anything https://github.com/search?q=list+of+anything .. and you can make your own free presence with github pages, just like on geocities! https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart (now where do you find those 'under construction' giffies? :-) /* old things never die, they just get pushed to some free github repo. Maybe there is some git server up there in the sky, that will take care of us when we die :-( (figuratively speaking) */
- LandStander 4y ago
  now where do you find those 'under construction' giffies? here: http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/ http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    Does anyone know where I can find those banners that said things like "Best viewed with a Macintosh"? I'm thinking specifically of one with animated gif with a rotating 90s Apple logo. In exchange, I offer this rare jpg from my files: [rare jpg withdrawn].
    - spc476 4y ago
      How about <https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/index.html https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/index.html>?
      - tablespoon 4y ago
        Very nice, but the particular gif I'm thinking about was larger than 88x31. Edit: found a couple of versions here: https://gifcities.org/ https://gifcities.org/ - The GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine https://web.archive.org/web/20090730030026im_/http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5548/macmade.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20090730030026im_/http://www.geo... https://web.archive.org/web/20091027092125/http://www.geocities.com/gzerbin/madewithamac.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20091027092125/http://www.geocit... https://web.archive.org/web/20090830201856/http://geocities.com/aheateacher/madebymac.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20090830201856/http://geocities....
drewcoo 4y ago
The web wasn't taken over by advertising and walled gardens. It was always like that. Most of the folks experiencing those Angelfire or GeoCities sites back in the day got online through a paid portal. Popups and banners were ubiquitous (web 0, gopher 1). The web never quite met Ted Nelson's (among others) dreams. It's the 21st century and not only do I not have bidirectional links but there's no hope of Nelson-style transclusion. [1] And Xanadu [2] remains a dream. I'd be more interested in seeing or helping explore lost ideas like those than in creating some shadow of the actual 1990s. That would allow us to explore other past futures (alternative presents?) than this one. And why the nostalgia trip for old web if not exploring what we lost? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion [2] Not a direct link to info only about Xanadu, but better in this context - a Mondo 2000 interview where Nelson talks abuot Xanadu: https://archive.org/details/XPARA.d8Nov87/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/XPARA.d8Nov87/mode/1up
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  Bidirectional links and transclusion are core, essential features in the wave of amazing PKM tools and services that the "Tools For Thought" community uses in daily work. See eg Obsidian, logseq, roam / athens, etc.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    Here are the seeds of the future of actual AI, maybe in 50-100 years. Useful AI (not machine learning, classifiers etc) begins in IA (intelligence amplification) and builds outwards according to human needs.
    - visarga 4y ago
      > Useful AI (not machine learning, classifiers etc) That's the most useful AI we have to date. But I agree with you, intelligence amplification is my most desired AI fruit. I hope to experience it someday. I am experimenting today with using GPT-3 to get difficult concepts explained in a Q&A fashion, with or without contextual text. Results are mixed, sometimes it can dumb down a concept to make it clear, other times I feel I better spend my time reading the original paper. I foresee personalised tutoring by language models becoming a trend. Not just for kids, but for everyone who needs to keep up with a rapid changing field and needs to research a lot of scientific literature.
chrisweekly 4y ago
The linked article seems a bit dismissive of Indieweb ( https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ ) but I've found some terrific sites assoc w it -- eg BoffoSocko.com -- and they seem to me at least as big a part of the "revival" as any if the others noted there. I also think Remix.run deserve a ton of credit for putting the focus back on web fundamentals (HTTP, HTML) and progressive enhancement (apps work without js enabled).
lawrenceyan 4y ago
I don’t get it. The popularization of crypto is exactly what someone interested in web revival should want (breaking down barriers, rules, walled gardens, etc). Ponzi schemes have always existed and will continue to exist. We should instead teach people to be more resilient to / be better at spotting them instead of trying to completely remove any possibility of ponzis, which was never going to be possible in the first place.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 10amxn10 4y ago
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  What I don't get is what those purported "barriers, rules, walled gardens, etc" are that Web3 enthusiasts keep claiming they are bringing down. I could set up my own website on its own server back in 2004, when Google was still an up-and-coming disruptor, Amazon was just starting AWS, and Facebook was only a glint in Zuckerberg's eye. Now in 2022, when Google is called the "most powerful company in the world", maybe 30% of the internet is running on AWS, and Facebook is sometimes considered a threat to democracy, I can still set up my own website on its own server. What barriers have been raised between then and now? And how do Web3 or cryptocurrencies "break them down"?
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    You can capture some of the profit flows now, which I think is key. Open source is open source and will always have a place. You should be able to set up a website on your own server whenever you want, but that's different than being able to directly take part in ownership of capital.
    - Mordisquitos 4y ago
      I'm afraid I still don't understand. Which profit flows are you talking about? And ownership of which capital? If I set up a personal website or for a local non-profit organisation with no advertising, there is no profit to capture. And if I include advertising or take donations I don't need to capture "some" of the profits, I already capture them in their entirety. Regarding capital, are you referring to server infrastructure? I can see the appeal of some kind of "hosting cooperative" in which all users of the servers take part ownership of them. These may already exist. However, I fail to see how cryptocurrency would be necessary for this in any way.
simongray 4y ago
I think the sentiment is great, but reviving the old style is not necessary and makes it more kitsch than it has to be. I'm no fan of the boring, corporate Silicon Valley style either, but IMO the real revival spirit is about making your own personal style and not a fake 90s website.
- wly_cdgr 4y ago
  +100
- CaptArmchair 4y ago
  Having read the article, there's no mentioning of reviving a particular visual / graphic style. On the contrary, the author explicitly states: > It's important not to confuse the web revival with artistic styles such as Vaporwave; Instead, the author tried to capture a set of first principles that seem to drive a more broad revival of early online culture. The first of those principles they list is: > Creativity comes first - They value creative expression and the ability to customise and decorate their digital spaces. Which agrees with what you're saying. Arguably, the author's chosen design might inadvertently detract from that message. Then again, it's their personal website. They're calling the shots. This is how this individual chooses to express themselves. And that's just every bit as valid as what anyone else does, which would be a core tenet in support of online freedom.
  - simongray 4y ago
    If you click on some of the many outgoing links to other "revival" websites on that page you will see that they're all in that style. Perhaps this is just the case of the 90s aesthetic being the fashion of the day—particularly for zoomers who mostly didn't experience the 90s—but I still find it quite unoriginal.
    - CaptArmchair 4y ago
      I suppose that's personal taste, which is absolutely fine. Personally, I feel that the design isn't particularly appealing either, but that's, like, my own opinion. If anything, it's not brutalist design: https://brutalistwebsites.com/ https://brutalistwebsites.com/ It's just that one can choose to see the design as distinct from the content.
wly_cdgr 4y ago
beders 4y ago
Advertises for Web1.0 - embeds a video :)
- tempodox 4y ago
  Should have been converted to animated GIF.
lastdong 4y ago
Now just waiting for the flash revolution… maybe we can ffwd to the early 2000s flash (swf) interactive web this time with html5 tools (yugop, hillman curtis, north kingdom, etc) In any case, great to see new pulses of creativity in the web Edit: FWA is still going https://thefwa.com/awards/page/1/ https://thefwa.com/awards/page/1/
marttt 4y ago
A recent experiment: publishing your online stuff as PDF files: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31375013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31375013 The author calls the HTML website -> PDF zine switch "deurbanising the web" in his/her manifesto: PDFs are self-contained, offlineable, files, decentralised, discoverable, independent of browsers, with a tool ecosystem that exists today, open standard, part of the web, page oriented. The manifesto is an insightful read for sure: http://lab6.com/0 http://lab6.com/0 I think I would absolutely love to browse this "PDF internet" if only PDF files were smaller than the typical several megabytes. For that reason, gopherspace and gemini (or casual web with a text-only browser like w3m) seem like a more compelling alternative, but YMMV.
- robin_reala 4y ago
  Unfortunately PDFs require specialist knowledge to make them accessible, whereas HTML is accessible by default and requires specialist knowledge to fuck it up.
- soco 4y ago
  Do yo want to download this file? Yes. Open the file? Ok. Then zoom around, more zooming or less depending on the device you are because it's never the right size for your screen. That includes lots of panning around to have the right section on the screen, the smaller the screen the more panning. Page-oriented has value only if you read them on a page - printed or e-ink reader. Otherwise it's just a major hassle which also fills up your downloads folder. Yes, I hate PDFs in 99% of the cases.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Whatever PDF is, it's surely not the way to unfuck the web given it can embed text-as-pictures, frequently breaks "semantic" (reading) text order, and can contain JavaScript just as a website can. I'm sometimes printing to PDF to even be able to read an article full of autoplay videos, other ads, and trackers. The reason why the web is dying, and will continue to die, is simply JavaScript, a generational/resume-driven desire to venture into the most absurd techniques to make the simplest form work, seizure of the web by Google et al, coupled with a lack of incentives for quality content. And the astonishing foolishness of nerds wanting to turn the web into a reactive-functional mvc showcase or whatever.
3qz 4y ago
This just looks like a mid life crisis project
HidyBush 4y ago
I might be extremely old fashioned, but this is not the web I would want to be revived. This inaccessible mess of "artsy" html and css, images and gifs and sound bits. The web I want back is the original one: hyperlinked text documents formatted using a standard language. I want my browser to basically be an e-book reader, where I can choose any font, spacing and formatting that I desire so any content on the web is exactly to my liking and I don't have to waste time figuring stuff out. If you truly want to show me an image just upload it to your server and simply hyperlink it in your blog post. My browser will decide if and how to show it. Do I want a visual experience? Set the browser to automatically download every image and display it. Do I want to just read text without distractions? Set the browser to show me a download link without loading the image. People who want their sites to be "works of art" or something should just create beautiful PDFs using a professional publishing suite or use a game engine to make a truly interactive experience. If you want your personal website to be a DOOM map where you access your pages by killing monsters then please don't push it into my browser but make it a dedicated offline experience.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Just curious, how old are you? In your 50s? I'm wondering if, like music and fashion, people just have nostalgia for a certain era of things. Me, I prefer the geocities era that I grew up with.
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    I think it's not about age but about aesthetic, im at least two decades off from my fifties and I definitely prefer hyper fast, minamilist design. I also prefer to curate my own experience especially with the web
  - wink 4y ago
    It has a certain charm but I am kinda glad the animated construction gifs and nonsensical navigation menus (if at all) are gone. I got online in 98 at age 15, I 100% grew up with this and took part - and I absolutely support people publishing stuff just for the fun of it, but I was kinda glad when everything started a bit more readable in the early 00s. Hell, I have no problem with the ugly backgrounds, just all the BLINK and pink on blue text and the gifs...
ricardo81 4y ago
I wonder how much of the 'indie web' exists in its original (not revived) form. Are there any numbers for it? Going by link rot and domain expiries perhaps less than half over the course of a decade or two. So much for cool URIs don't change! For me, it's more about the information discovery element. Beyond a penalty in Google and not being in the 24 hour news cycle of social media- you don't have traditional discovery like web rings, directories like DMOZ and forums that specialise in a niche. They're all still present in one form or another, but far less prominent.
0dayz 4y ago
It might just be me but I genuinely never liked the by now archaic design, instead it's always been about how the culture and community was very vibrant and different (talking about anime on 4chan vs a dedicated fan forum) each time. In fact if I really were to be nostalgic with web design it would have to be the successor to simple web when every website was unique in its design (there were some fads like the website should look like an early dnb CD cover with really small text).
michaelgrafl 4y ago
I have fond memories of the web 1.0, but I have no need for a revival of its aesthetics. What I long for is a space with no commercial interests or social media agenda, but one that exists for sharing stuff for the sake of self-expression and non-gamified exchange/shooting the shit with like-minded peers.
rvz 4y ago
> Web Revival is one name for an internet based movement that has a bunch of names, here are a few of them; This movement is quite frankly hopelessly utopian and that nostalgic ship has sailed 30 years ago with the late stragglers missing that ship and talking about coming on-board. It is no different to the utopian Web3 DAO communities I keep seeing who think that everything is going to be on-chain. Reviving this Web 1.0 and thinking that is everything is going back to that in the modern era is also just as utopian. Not many of these revivalist communities will survive in their absolute ideals and some of them will end up compromising in the long run to go against what they have been preaching for. Here's and example of one building the Small Web and is part of the so-called 'Web Revival': https:/small-tech.org OK, want to fund it? Crypto. [0] There you go. [0] https://small-tech.org/fund-us https://small-tech.org/fund-us
grumbel 4y ago
To me the biggest problem of the Web is that there still isn't a standardized way to publish on it. Just uploading files to your server isn't enough when your audience has no easy means to find out that it happened. That's why all the big centralized sites have a huge advantage over the Web. Youtube, Twitter and Co. will send notifications when there is new stuff. My browser won't do the same for the Web. Recommendations are another thing missing on the Web. There is no way to get related websites without the author of the current one putting links on it. RSS had a bunch of good ideas, but it never had good browser support by default and the need for the website author to create it, limited it's usefulness. I am also not a fan of RSS being basically a copy of the website, not the website itself. Shouldn't good HTML markup be enough to retrieve the information automatically? Either way, I think we really need to reinvent publishing, bookmarking, searching and cataloging of the Web. Just going back to late 90s style of Web design isn't going to work when SoC optimized sites still bubble to the top and push everything else out of the way.
- dgb23 4y ago
  > RSS had a bunch of good ideas, but it never had good browser support by default and the need for the website author to create it, limited it's usefulness. I discovered RSS late, I knew what it was but I never paid attention to it. Now it is my primary source for aggregation. It works well and is very alive. Big sites often provide multiple categorized feeds, RSS readers are simple and highly customizable in terms of curation. Curation and organization/bookmarking are the killer features here, not necessarily reading itself. I often visit sites directly from my RSS reader and I don't typically care whether I'm only getting headlines and descriptions/leads rather than the full content from a feed. The only bummer is that it isn't adopted by the masses. I think browsers should be blamed here. It should be a default, easy to use feature of every major browser IMO. I just don't see a good counter argument. There are a ton of unexplored use-cases for it too. > I am also not a fan of RSS being basically a copy of the website, not the website itself. Shouldn't good HTML markup be enough to retrieve the information automatically? I don't necessarily agree, but an alternative is promoted by the Indieweb community. They are marking up their HTML in a way so you can extract a feed directly from itself, I think it is called h-feed or similar. Most of the arguments I personally disagree with, especially thinking of HTML files as the source of truth, because in my worldview this complects data projection with normalized data representation (which HTML is terrible at). But all of their arguments have a compelling rationale that are interesting to think about and you might agree with.
smm11 4y ago
Whole lot of folks here who haven't lived when there wasn't a World Wide Web, I see.
Melonking 4y ago
A quick note: I'm Melonking (The author of the article) I'd just like to add, I see this as an artistic movement above all else. It's not about changing the world, and there is no goal here. It's not trying to solve any technical issues, nor is it about "defeating" social media or crypto stuff; and it's not about "succeeding" as a movement. The only goal is to exist, and we do! And if you want to join in, we're here and you're welcome, and we're so glad to see you! I do agree there is a bias towards 90s themed sites in the article. It's a visual language that speaks to many people right now, but it's not exclusively part of the web revival. A web revival site is just about web design as play; where play is not about passing time but about creating other realities, so that we can become those realities. The aim is not to be revisionist; it's not about remaking the past; it's about studying aspects of the past and mixing them with what we know today, in order to create something new. There are many faces to the web; some are about rapid access to information, some are about commerce and business or data mining and technology etc etc; Web revival sites are just one face of that kaleidoscope; but its a face that is heavily under valued and under represented on the modern web.

170 points by spansoa 4y ago

This is what the world looked like when it felt safe/exciting/mysterious, maybe I'll feel that way now if I make it look like that again. For me that world is in the seventies, not the nineties. I want a psychedelic not a web revival.

hprotagonist 4y ago
microdosing is VC backed now! aren’t you thrilled?! :/

scyclow 4y ago

It makes me very happy to know that all of these websites exist. It also makes me sad to see unnecessary hostility towards crypto. I get it: most NFTs are hyper commercialized trash, and they're in direct opposition to the values outlined in this article. But there's also so much weird, non-commercialized crypto stuff out there that shares a lot of the ethos of early web tinkerers.

meowkit 4y ago
Reading the yesterweb criticism page of crypto/web3 that is linked to by the OP makes me think this movement is not going to gain much momentum. The criticism is somewhat accurate, but extremely shallow and makes no attempt to steel man potential benefits. Not that I expect this to land well with the HN crowd, but web3/crypto has the tyrannical effects of capitalism/growth on its side as a force for the “future of the web”. Going up against that with the non-profit model seems… quaint.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO."
  - scyclow 4y ago
    I'm looking forward to the NFT bear market where Ethereum moves to Proof of Stake, and people realize that unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them.
    - Fargoan 4y ago
      We already do that on Tezos
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      > unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them. There's no such thing as a "unique digital asset". Networked computers are good at sharing copies. Any developments against this nature are manufactured, artificial scarcity, for the gains of the controlling party, at the expense of everyone else; and probably in the name of security. If you like them so much I can roll a die and tell only you which number I got, but that wouldn't affect the world in any way unless we're gambling, nor make it any less "unique" than crypto - it's just more bits/dice.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO." The answer is "Yes, but at a cost". One must subsidise the parasitic nature of digital capitalism. Many of the comments here are about the style or mechanisms of the web, but don't talk much about the values - which are sharing. The object is to give some value to the world, sharing a little of the creation you do. I've set up websites with HOWTO essays, code examples, mp3 files of sound effects I collected, interesting images etc. In the early days it was popular and well regarded amongst a music coding community, but within 10 years it was inoperable. Bots crawling all over it constantly sucked the life out of the server, and literally tens of thousands of parasitic links from commercial entities, spamdexers and SEO trash attached themselves. My site was like a ship dragged down by barnacles and weeds. When I shut down the site I got angry emails from entitled assholes who had embedded sound effects in their applications by linking to my site as if it were an infinite free resource. This story has been told a million times by people who set up websites for fun in the 90s and 00s, and pulled them down after realising the cost (often in time spent reading logs, defending, blocking, banning, rate-limiting etc) What is to be done? In the digital world capitalism does not create value but extracts or appropriates it from creators. To be a digital creator means paying a constant tax to support those who want to make money from you. While cryptocurrency type Web3.0 seems to offer a solution it only fights fire with fire, wrapping the web in a framework of mutual extraction and appropriation. Ultimately I think that only plays into the hands of the extractors who will use it to find ever more effective ways to thrive as parasites.
giantrobot 4y ago
> But there's also so much weird, non-commercialized crypto stuff out there that shares a lot of the ethos of early web tinkerers. Bullshit. Without miners there's no "crypto" and without payouts there's no miners. So "web3" can only exist where there's some financial incentive to run miners. Users can't spend real money to access this system so they need to convert their money to Geoffrey dollars to even access "web3" content. This is 180° from the "old web". End users needed no more investment than their computer and Internet connection. They didn't have to prop up some asshole's upline to check out the Unofficial X-Files Fan Page.
- scyclow 4y ago
  > So "web3" can only exist where there's some financial incentive to run miners. I can say the same about anything else on the internet. Keeping the servers running costs money > Users can't spend real money to access this system so they need to convert their money to Geoffrey dollars to even access "web3" content. You can actually access most web3 content without spending Geoffrey dollars, or US Dollars. If we're talking about public blockchains like Ethereum, it's all out in the open. By definition, it's a public ledger. IPFS data (which has nothing to do with crypto) is also very public. > End users needed no more investment than their computer and Internet connection. I guess some web3 websites require you to connect with a wallet, but downloading a browser extension doesn't seem very prohibitive.
  - DebtDeflation 4y ago
    What problem is web3 even trying to solve? As it stands today I can conduct commerce over the web, pay for access to content directly, or have free content that is advertising supported. Having to connect with a wallet and spend some specialized cryptocurrency to access a website provides what benefit? It seems like a solution chasing a problem like literally everything else crypto related.
    - scyclow 4y ago
      I think the main class of problems it solves is it lets multiple applications, which may be developed by completely different entities at different times, share data with very strong guarantees. So in the context of the Web Revivalist movement, how do you build stateful applications? It's great when individuals host their own DIY servers, but that doesn't really give you much stability. And in aggregate, it's even more difficult to build rich, stateful ecosystems of applications. How do you handle servers going down and APIs changing? Link rot for stateless websites is a hard enough as it is.
MrAwesome 4y ago
I am not aware of any non-commercialized crypto anything (from my understanding, this is sorta by definition, but maybe I'm missing something). Do you have any examples?
- voldacar 4y ago
  Monero isn't commercialized. It's just a currency that people actually use for transactions, not a product.
  - MrAwesome 4y ago
    A currency is generally intended mainly for commercial purposes, isn't it? I think the word commercialized isn't quite right for what I mean then. So more specifically, I mean: "not for the purpose of creating or transferring monetary value, and not requiring the expenditure of money to create/send the amount of data necessary to host a simple plaintext/html page"
    - voldacar 4y ago
      I was assuming you meant things like NFTs or smart contracts, i.e. commercial products that live on a blockchain
- scyclow 4y ago
  The Worm is a really fun one. The idea is that you transfer the worm NFT from wallet to wallet (it's "trying to visit every wallet on the Ethereum blockchain"), and it leaves a non-transferrable token wherever it's been. To my knowledge, it's been transferred about 750 times without anyone selling it. https://theworm.wtf/ https://theworm.wtf/ Another cool one is minting amulets. You write a poem, and if the hash of that poem has an amulet in it (four or more consecutive 8s), then you can mint it as a token for your collection. But you can't mint the same hashed poem twice https://text.bargains/collection/ https://text.bargains/collection/ I also met someone once who gave me (and everyone he meets) an NFT from an RFID chip implanted in his hand. That was pretty whacky.
civilized 4y ago
Crypto is about making sure the supply of something stays limited. Seems pretty contradictory to the spirit of free creative expression the Web Revival is going for.
- scyclow 4y ago
  I think they solve different problems. I love independent websites, and the web is an amazing medium for serving stateless content. But I think web3 compliments it really well when you want to do something that hooks into a larger, stateful ecosystem.
  - civilized 4y ago
    I'm sure you can think of a much simpler way of doing stateful things with networked computers than crypto.
    - scyclow 4y ago
      I think it really depends on what you want to do. If you want build a comment system for your website, then web3 is totally the wrong tool for the job. If you want to write an application that coordinates data across multiple websites, and you're worried about servers going down or APIs changing, then it's a little trickier to think of a simpler way.
- tjstebbing 4y ago
  Except for instance something like Dogecoin that is the direct opposite of what you're saying?
  - civilized 4y ago
    The supply of dogecoins is increasing but still strictly limited at any given time. They're not like artwork that can be copied and shared by anyone.
jancsika 4y ago
Most importantly-- it shares the foundational feature of having such a small publishing cost that it creates a paradigm shift in how we are able to self-organize. That's one thing that bothered and confused the cranks with burgeoning Wikipedia. Why does the Pokemon article have a longer page than one on the Vietnam War? The priorities are out of wack, they thought, without realizing that the lack of scarcity in a web page (well, technically a scroll) and low friction of revisions ends up changing the process of editing an encyclopedia for length. It's similar for Bitcoin. Cranks on HN always want to to downplay it's 3-orders-of-magnitude superior transaction speed to Visa/Mastercard by pointing out the much smaller value being transacted. One million microtransactions for a grand total of $1000, they say, without realizing that it's the types of transactions these (often automated) payments support which simply aren't possible using the old payment paradigm. Without the scale and speed of microtransactions Bitcoin makes possible, you don't just end up with a less effective National Association of Independent Investigative Units. Games in Geocities 2 don't just get a little bit laggy. FOSSmobiles don't just take a little longer to update their FOSStertainment panels. You simply end up with a world where none of that stuff exists. Oh wait I forgot Bitcoin doesn't work like that. Still, we've got Sci-hub donations and that one ransomware that apparently donates to charities. So not so different, really.
- Fargoan 4y ago
  You can do that with Lightning Network

Semiapies 4y ago

I support more people having websites, if only to make it harder for people to pretend it's revolutionary and special to do so.

Volker_W 4y ago
I have never heard anyone claiming that having a website is revolutionary and special.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  My charitable read of the comment here might be: the only culturally acknowledged web presence today is that of the Platform -- and when the platforms are so monopoly-adjacent, the skills necessary to build a planet scale platform really are pretty cutting-edge and rarefied [1]. But there's nothing about making a website of your own that requires that -- so ordinary people ought to feel like they can attempt it on their own without a Platform in control. [1]. inb4 "but if we'd all just stuck to monospaced plain text without executable scripts, none of that would have been necessary!"
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    It’s probably easier to set up a ‘planet scale’ website now than it was to set up a website in the 90’s. Setting up a VM like lightsail and hooking up a CDN is pretty straightforward. Setting up a serverless site is even easier.
  - Semiapies 4y ago
    That's sort of part of it. On the one hand, I'm absolutely for anyone with the urge to go out and build a web site, just like I'm the same way about someone wanting to write. If all they find out is that they don't actually like doing it, then hey, they're still ahead. On the other hand, I'm tired of the goofy fetishizing of the early, rather exclusive and limited web wrapped up in a copy-and-paste rant about social media and how this is some bold alternative to teh corporations. The talking about people who just have websites as if they've rejected modern society and gone off to live in communes in the wilderness...it's just deeply weird, and it's probably best killed by more people considering making a website a perfectly normal and doable thing. Then, of course, we'll probably have much of the same enthusiasts bemoaning all the "terrible" websites by the wrong sorts of people.

AlexandrB 4y ago

There's a great video[1] on VRChat and how its current state seems to encapsulate a lot of the article's ethos but for emerging metaverse tech. I suspect that if Meta is successful with their metaverse efforts it will be a repeat of the Geocities -> Facebook transition. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ

hifikuno 4y ago
I watched this video not long ago and realized I had sorely misjudged the VRChat community. I had only ever experienced the public community and I just assumed that is all there was to VRChat. I had no idea that such meaningful and dedicated communities existed in private. I feel like I should fire up the 'ol headset again and go looking once more.

ajxs 4y ago

I recently completed work on a small hobby project to support the small-web revival. It's a webring hosting platform. Unfortunately I haven't really had the time available to promote it. I don't expect it to really gather too much traction, however there's definitely been a bit of a revival of webrings! https://webri.ng/ https://webri.ng/ Once I'd purchased that domain, I simply had to do something with it!

mrec 4y ago
You might want to start your FAQ by saying what a webring is. Not everyone was around in the late 90s.
- ajxs 4y ago
  Thank you for the great suggestion! I'll take that on board and add something to the FAQ.
  - Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
    And most importantly why it’s relevant today. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t, I just don’t know and would like to find out.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      From what I can tell it's websites that link to each other with a similar theme. I mean, isn't that just what site pages are except on multiple servers for some reason?
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        "You may be interested in" sort of theme, not necessarily the same topic. The intention is to get you to jump domains, hoping you'll bookmark the ones you want to explore more fully later.
rr808 4y ago

AlexDragusin 4y ago

I am also working towards this direction at Relevanto[1]. Encouraging the exploratory way of stumbling upon the good stuff. Lots of work but it's worth it. [1] https://www.relevanto.com https://www.relevanto.com

curious-im 4y ago
Wanted some news, opened Citizen Free Press from News Aggregators. Transgender rapists, drag queen story hour, antivax, soy boys, democrats supports killing babies. Comments also delivering "Relevanto was created to provide access to quality resources." Yep, cool...
- AlexDragusin 4y ago
  I see where you're coming from and surely understand your point. It's good that you are able to tell some of these things apart. Now think how did you get to this point, likely by being exposed to various views so that's a good thing and should be encouraged. Especially with some of the more polarizing matters, one should be aware of other views. One cannot develop a sense of things by living in a bubble, in fact I'd argue that the society is seemingly more polarized because of these bubbles, the general avoidance to be exposed to opposing views and consider the reasonings objectively but that's a discussion for another place and time :)

MichaelMoser123 4y ago

the closest thing i found is .. github. You even have a "definitive list of lists (of lists)" https://github.com/jnv/lists https://github.com/jnv/lists You can find lots of foo by searching for "list of foo" on github search. https://github.com/search?q=list+of+anything https://github.com/search?q=list+of+anything .. and you can make your own free presence with github pages, just like on geocities! https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart (now where do you find those 'under construction' giffies? :-) /* old things never die, they just get pushed to some free github repo. Maybe there is some git server up there in the sky, that will take care of us when we die :-( (figuratively speaking) */

LandStander 4y ago
now where do you find those 'under construction' giffies? here: http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/ http://textfiles.com/underconstruction/
- tablespoon 4y ago
  Does anyone know where I can find those banners that said things like "Best viewed with a Macintosh"? I'm thinking specifically of one with animated gif with a rotating 90s Apple logo. In exchange, I offer this rare jpg from my files: [rare jpg withdrawn].
  - spc476 4y ago
    How about <https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/index.html https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/index.html>?
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      Very nice, but the particular gif I'm thinking about was larger than 88x31. Edit: found a couple of versions here: https://gifcities.org/ https://gifcities.org/ - The GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine https://web.archive.org/web/20090730030026im_/http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5548/macmade.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20090730030026im_/http://www.geo... https://web.archive.org/web/20091027092125/http://www.geocities.com/gzerbin/madewithamac.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20091027092125/http://www.geocit... https://web.archive.org/web/20090830201856/http://geocities.com/aheateacher/madebymac.gif https://web.archive.org/web/20090830201856/http://geocities....

drewcoo 4y ago

The web wasn't taken over by advertising and walled gardens. It was always like that. Most of the folks experiencing those Angelfire or GeoCities sites back in the day got online through a paid portal. Popups and banners were ubiquitous (web 0, gopher 1). The web never quite met Ted Nelson's (among others) dreams. It's the 21st century and not only do I not have bidirectional links but there's no hope of Nelson-style transclusion. [1] And Xanadu [2] remains a dream. I'd be more interested in seeing or helping explore lost ideas like those than in creating some shadow of the actual 1990s. That would allow us to explore other past futures (alternative presents?) than this one. And why the nostalgia trip for old web if not exploring what we lost? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion [2] Not a direct link to info only about Xanadu, but better in this context - a Mondo 2000 interview where Nelson talks abuot Xanadu: https://archive.org/details/XPARA.d8Nov87/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/XPARA.d8Nov87/mode/1up

chrisweekly 4y ago
Bidirectional links and transclusion are core, essential features in the wave of amazing PKM tools and services that the "Tools For Thought" community uses in daily work. See eg Obsidian, logseq, roam / athens, etc.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Here are the seeds of the future of actual AI, maybe in 50-100 years. Useful AI (not machine learning, classifiers etc) begins in IA (intelligence amplification) and builds outwards according to human needs.
  - visarga 4y ago
    > Useful AI (not machine learning, classifiers etc) That's the most useful AI we have to date. But I agree with you, intelligence amplification is my most desired AI fruit. I hope to experience it someday. I am experimenting today with using GPT-3 to get difficult concepts explained in a Q&A fashion, with or without contextual text. Results are mixed, sometimes it can dumb down a concept to make it clear, other times I feel I better spend my time reading the original paper. I foresee personalised tutoring by language models becoming a trend. Not just for kids, but for everyone who needs to keep up with a rapid changing field and needs to research a lot of scientific literature.

chrisweekly 4y ago

The linked article seems a bit dismissive of Indieweb ( https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/ ) but I've found some terrific sites assoc w it -- eg BoffoSocko.com -- and they seem to me at least as big a part of the "revival" as any if the others noted there. I also think Remix.run deserve a ton of credit for putting the focus back on web fundamentals (HTTP, HTML) and progressive enhancement (apps work without js enabled).

lawrenceyan 4y ago

I don’t get it. The popularization of crypto is exactly what someone interested in web revival should want (breaking down barriers, rules, walled gardens, etc). Ponzi schemes have always existed and will continue to exist. We should instead teach people to be more resilient to / be better at spotting them instead of trying to completely remove any possibility of ponzis, which was never going to be possible in the first place.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
10amxn10 4y ago
Mordisquitos 4y ago
What I don't get is what those purported "barriers, rules, walled gardens, etc" are that Web3 enthusiasts keep claiming they are bringing down. I could set up my own website on its own server back in 2004, when Google was still an up-and-coming disruptor, Amazon was just starting AWS, and Facebook was only a glint in Zuckerberg's eye. Now in 2022, when Google is called the "most powerful company in the world", maybe 30% of the internet is running on AWS, and Facebook is sometimes considered a threat to democracy, I can still set up my own website on its own server. What barriers have been raised between then and now? And how do Web3 or cryptocurrencies "break them down"?
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  You can capture some of the profit flows now, which I think is key. Open source is open source and will always have a place. You should be able to set up a website on your own server whenever you want, but that's different than being able to directly take part in ownership of capital.
  - Mordisquitos 4y ago
    I'm afraid I still don't understand. Which profit flows are you talking about? And ownership of which capital? If I set up a personal website or for a local non-profit organisation with no advertising, there is no profit to capture. And if I include advertising or take donations I don't need to capture "some" of the profits, I already capture them in their entirety. Regarding capital, are you referring to server infrastructure? I can see the appeal of some kind of "hosting cooperative" in which all users of the servers take part ownership of them. These may already exist. However, I fail to see how cryptocurrency would be necessary for this in any way.

simongray 4y ago

I think the sentiment is great, but reviving the old style is not necessary and makes it more kitsch than it has to be. I'm no fan of the boring, corporate Silicon Valley style either, but IMO the real revival spirit is about making your own personal style and not a fake 90s website.

wly_cdgr 4y ago
+100
CaptArmchair 4y ago
Having read the article, there's no mentioning of reviving a particular visual / graphic style. On the contrary, the author explicitly states: > It's important not to confuse the web revival with artistic styles such as Vaporwave; Instead, the author tried to capture a set of first principles that seem to drive a more broad revival of early online culture. The first of those principles they list is: > Creativity comes first - They value creative expression and the ability to customise and decorate their digital spaces. Which agrees with what you're saying. Arguably, the author's chosen design might inadvertently detract from that message. Then again, it's their personal website. They're calling the shots. This is how this individual chooses to express themselves. And that's just every bit as valid as what anyone else does, which would be a core tenet in support of online freedom.
- simongray 4y ago
  If you click on some of the many outgoing links to other "revival" websites on that page you will see that they're all in that style. Perhaps this is just the case of the 90s aesthetic being the fashion of the day—particularly for zoomers who mostly didn't experience the 90s—but I still find it quite unoriginal.
  - CaptArmchair 4y ago
    I suppose that's personal taste, which is absolutely fine. Personally, I feel that the design isn't particularly appealing either, but that's, like, my own opinion. If anything, it's not brutalist design: https://brutalistwebsites.com/ https://brutalistwebsites.com/ It's just that one can choose to see the design as distinct from the content.

wly_cdgr 4y ago

beders 4y ago

Advertises for Web1.0 - embeds a video :)

tempodox 4y ago
Should have been converted to animated GIF.

lastdong 4y ago

Now just waiting for the flash revolution… maybe we can ffwd to the early 2000s flash (swf) interactive web this time with html5 tools (yugop, hillman curtis, north kingdom, etc) In any case, great to see new pulses of creativity in the web Edit: FWA is still going https://thefwa.com/awards/page/1/ https://thefwa.com/awards/page/1/

marttt 4y ago

A recent experiment: publishing your online stuff as PDF files: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31375013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31375013 The author calls the HTML website -> PDF zine switch "deurbanising the web" in his/her manifesto: PDFs are self-contained, offlineable, files, decentralised, discoverable, independent of browsers, with a tool ecosystem that exists today, open standard, part of the web, page oriented. The manifesto is an insightful read for sure: http://lab6.com/0 http://lab6.com/0 I think I would absolutely love to browse this "PDF internet" if only PDF files were smaller than the typical several megabytes. For that reason, gopherspace and gemini (or casual web with a text-only browser like w3m) seem like a more compelling alternative, but YMMV.

robin_reala 4y ago
Unfortunately PDFs require specialist knowledge to make them accessible, whereas HTML is accessible by default and requires specialist knowledge to fuck it up.
soco 4y ago
Do yo want to download this file? Yes. Open the file? Ok. Then zoom around, more zooming or less depending on the device you are because it's never the right size for your screen. That includes lots of panning around to have the right section on the screen, the smaller the screen the more panning. Page-oriented has value only if you read them on a page - printed or e-ink reader. Otherwise it's just a major hassle which also fills up your downloads folder. Yes, I hate PDFs in 99% of the cases.
tannhaeuser 4y ago
Whatever PDF is, it's surely not the way to unfuck the web given it can embed text-as-pictures, frequently breaks "semantic" (reading) text order, and can contain JavaScript just as a website can. I'm sometimes printing to PDF to even be able to read an article full of autoplay videos, other ads, and trackers. The reason why the web is dying, and will continue to die, is simply JavaScript, a generational/resume-driven desire to venture into the most absurd techniques to make the simplest form work, seizure of the web by Google et al, coupled with a lack of incentives for quality content. And the astonishing foolishness of nerds wanting to turn the web into a reactive-functional mvc showcase or whatever.

3qz 4y ago

This just looks like a mid life crisis project

HidyBush 4y ago

I might be extremely old fashioned, but this is not the web I would want to be revived. This inaccessible mess of "artsy" html and css, images and gifs and sound bits. The web I want back is the original one: hyperlinked text documents formatted using a standard language. I want my browser to basically be an e-book reader, where I can choose any font, spacing and formatting that I desire so any content on the web is exactly to my liking and I don't have to waste time figuring stuff out. If you truly want to show me an image just upload it to your server and simply hyperlink it in your blog post. My browser will decide if and how to show it. Do I want a visual experience? Set the browser to automatically download every image and display it. Do I want to just read text without distractions? Set the browser to show me a download link without loading the image. People who want their sites to be "works of art" or something should just create beautiful PDFs using a professional publishing suite or use a game engine to make a truly interactive experience. If you want your personal website to be a DOOM map where you access your pages by killing monsters then please don't push it into my browser but make it a dedicated offline experience.

guerrilla 4y ago
Just curious, how old are you? In your 50s? I'm wondering if, like music and fashion, people just have nostalgia for a certain era of things. Me, I prefer the geocities era that I grew up with.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  I think it's not about age but about aesthetic, im at least two decades off from my fifties and I definitely prefer hyper fast, minamilist design. I also prefer to curate my own experience especially with the web
- wink 4y ago
  It has a certain charm but I am kinda glad the animated construction gifs and nonsensical navigation menus (if at all) are gone. I got online in 98 at age 15, I 100% grew up with this and took part - and I absolutely support people publishing stuff just for the fun of it, but I was kinda glad when everything started a bit more readable in the early 00s. Hell, I have no problem with the ugly backgrounds, just all the BLINK and pink on blue text and the gifs...

ricardo81 4y ago

I wonder how much of the 'indie web' exists in its original (not revived) form. Are there any numbers for it? Going by link rot and domain expiries perhaps less than half over the course of a decade or two. So much for cool URIs don't change! For me, it's more about the information discovery element. Beyond a penalty in Google and not being in the 24 hour news cycle of social media- you don't have traditional discovery like web rings, directories like DMOZ and forums that specialise in a niche. They're all still present in one form or another, but far less prominent.

0dayz 4y ago

It might just be me but I genuinely never liked the by now archaic design, instead it's always been about how the culture and community was very vibrant and different (talking about anime on 4chan vs a dedicated fan forum) each time. In fact if I really were to be nostalgic with web design it would have to be the successor to simple web when every website was unique in its design (there were some fads like the website should look like an early dnb CD cover with really small text).

michaelgrafl 4y ago

I have fond memories of the web 1.0, but I have no need for a revival of its aesthetics. What I long for is a space with no commercial interests or social media agenda, but one that exists for sharing stuff for the sake of self-expression and non-gamified exchange/shooting the shit with like-minded peers.

rvz 4y ago

> Web Revival is one name for an internet based movement that has a bunch of names, here are a few of them; This movement is quite frankly hopelessly utopian and that nostalgic ship has sailed 30 years ago with the late stragglers missing that ship and talking about coming on-board. It is no different to the utopian Web3 DAO communities I keep seeing who think that everything is going to be on-chain. Reviving this Web 1.0 and thinking that is everything is going back to that in the modern era is also just as utopian. Not many of these revivalist communities will survive in their absolute ideals and some of them will end up compromising in the long run to go against what they have been preaching for. Here's and example of one building the Small Web and is part of the so-called 'Web Revival': https:/small-tech.org OK, want to fund it? Crypto. [0] There you go. [0] https://small-tech.org/fund-us https://small-tech.org/fund-us

grumbel 4y ago

To me the biggest problem of the Web is that there still isn't a standardized way to publish on it. Just uploading files to your server isn't enough when your audience has no easy means to find out that it happened. That's why all the big centralized sites have a huge advantage over the Web. Youtube, Twitter and Co. will send notifications when there is new stuff. My browser won't do the same for the Web. Recommendations are another thing missing on the Web. There is no way to get related websites without the author of the current one putting links on it. RSS had a bunch of good ideas, but it never had good browser support by default and the need for the website author to create it, limited it's usefulness. I am also not a fan of RSS being basically a copy of the website, not the website itself. Shouldn't good HTML markup be enough to retrieve the information automatically? Either way, I think we really need to reinvent publishing, bookmarking, searching and cataloging of the Web. Just going back to late 90s style of Web design isn't going to work when SoC optimized sites still bubble to the top and push everything else out of the way.

dgb23 4y ago
> RSS had a bunch of good ideas, but it never had good browser support by default and the need for the website author to create it, limited it's usefulness. I discovered RSS late, I knew what it was but I never paid attention to it. Now it is my primary source for aggregation. It works well and is very alive. Big sites often provide multiple categorized feeds, RSS readers are simple and highly customizable in terms of curation. Curation and organization/bookmarking are the killer features here, not necessarily reading itself. I often visit sites directly from my RSS reader and I don't typically care whether I'm only getting headlines and descriptions/leads rather than the full content from a feed. The only bummer is that it isn't adopted by the masses. I think browsers should be blamed here. It should be a default, easy to use feature of every major browser IMO. I just don't see a good counter argument. There are a ton of unexplored use-cases for it too. > I am also not a fan of RSS being basically a copy of the website, not the website itself. Shouldn't good HTML markup be enough to retrieve the information automatically? I don't necessarily agree, but an alternative is promoted by the Indieweb community. They are marking up their HTML in a way so you can extract a feed directly from itself, I think it is called h-feed or similar. Most of the arguments I personally disagree with, especially thinking of HTML files as the source of truth, because in my worldview this complects data projection with normalized data representation (which HTML is terrible at). But all of their arguments have a compelling rationale that are interesting to think about and you might agree with.

smm11 4y ago

Whole lot of folks here who haven't lived when there wasn't a World Wide Web, I see.

Melonking 4y ago

A quick note: I'm Melonking (The author of the article) I'd just like to add, I see this as an artistic movement above all else. It's not about changing the world, and there is no goal here. It's not trying to solve any technical issues, nor is it about "defeating" social media or crypto stuff; and it's not about "succeeding" as a movement. The only goal is to exist, and we do! And if you want to join in, we're here and you're welcome, and we're so glad to see you! I do agree there is a bias towards 90s themed sites in the article. It's a visual language that speaks to many people right now, but it's not exclusively part of the web revival. A web revival site is just about web design as play; where play is not about passing time but about creating other realities, so that we can become those realities. The aim is not to be revisionist; it's not about remaking the past; it's about studying aspects of the past and mixing them with what we know today, in order to create something new. There are many faces to the web; some are about rapid access to information, some are about commerce and business or data mining and technology etc etc; Web revival sites are just one face of that kaleidoscope; but its a face that is heavily under valued and under represented on the modern web.