5 ms·

The Web is in great danger of "dying" partly because of Tim's awful endorsement of DRM baked into HTML5; Walled gardens by Apple, FB; disabling of web standards

The Web is in great danger of "dying" partly because of Tim's awful endorsement of DRM baked into HTML5; Walled gardens by Apple, FB; disabling of web standards (webgl) by apple in their browser in order to favor their app store cash cow; NSA sodomy; lack of security; no easy way for laypeople to be truly secure and private.... It is a very sad couple of years and I don't know the solution.

rimantas 13y ago
Please tell me more how any of this will kill the web. Me using DRM somehow kill all the web sites not using it? Walled gardens? I guess this phrase has lost all the meaning by now and is just thrown around as if it means something. Does Apple limit which web sites you can visit on iPad? Or maybe, just maybe Apple actually helped the web by releasing the first phone with truly capable browser? What has Facebook to do with it? It is just a successful product, do you also go around shouting that Adobe is killing the design industry, just because majority of the work is done in Photoshop? Also, your lament about walled gardens and then whining about being truly secure and private does not really compute. I guess I have much more privacy inside the Apple's garden than in an open land owned by Google. Also, looks that you have no idea how much work Apple has done to propel the things that we now take for granted: canvas element, CSS transforms and animations, all the initial work on WebKit before Google joined in (yes, I know it is based on KHTML, but it has none of the aforementioned staff before). There is no wonder you don't know the solution: it is hard do find a solution to nonexistent problems. No matter what you think, technology is not a zero sum game, and the web is not supposed to rule it all.
- nakedrobot2 13y ago
  When a concerted effort is made by an industry leader to kill open standards in favor of locking down users to their ecosystem (or "stack" as bruce sterling puts it) http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/bruce-sterling-on-why-it-stopped-making-sense-to-talk-about-the-internet-in-2012/266674/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/bruce-... http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-sxsw2013-closing-remarks-by-bruce-sterling/ http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-sxsw2...
  - Retric 13y ago
    It's not zero sum. High quality walled gardens push the 'open' world just as much as high quality 'open' solutions push walled gardens. Consider as much as people complain about walled gardens DNS is quietly backing the 'open' web because some things really do work better as a walled gardens.
userbinator 13y ago
Don't forget browser vendors slowly removing features "that should be developer-only", the lack of any real choice in browsers (there's only 3 or 4 major browsers, which is not that much better than a monopoly, and they're all heading in a similar direction), and the growing mass of (needless?) complexity that they're becoming. The Web started out being simple, so the barriers to entry were low and people easily got into writing pages to share information with others. Now anyone who wants to build a website gets bombarded with dozens (if not hundreds) of frameworks, libraries, application platform, etc. and it makes them feel like they have to somehow learn and use all of this new stuff, because they're given the impression (mostly from big commercial sites) that they have to do so or their site will "look outdated". I think we should encourage more "just writing webpages", with an emphasis on (mostly static) content, and less on the "app-ification" currently going on. As much as this is probably not a popular opinion here, I think the days of Geocities and the like, with almost everyone wanting to --- and easily accomplishing --- the task of writing webpages, was when the Web was much closer to its goals. Admittedly, these "amateurs" didn't have the best design for their sites, and browsers were less featureful than they are today, but somehow the "roughness" and "wild" nature of those days felt like far more of a user-empowering Web than it is today.
- blt 13y ago
  I agree with your basic stance, but I think that most people who would have used Geocities in the 90s use Tumblr or Wordpress/Blogger now.
- jaimebuelta 13y ago
  I think that now the barrier of entry to post information is WAY lower than it was in Geocities era. We have now lots of ways of easy post without having to know HTML (Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Facebook for more personal stuff, etc)
  - userbinator 13y ago
    Indeed, that is also partly responsible - there's less incentive for the public to learn HTML, and instead they will feel more inclined to rely on these frameworks/applications/services. The barrier of entry to just getting your opinion published has lowered; but the barrier of entry to making your own site and being a webmaster has gone in the opposite direction. I think that is largely how the Web is becoming more closed.
acdha 13y ago
> The Web is in great danger of "dying" partly because of Tim's awful endorsement of DRM baked into HTML5 Can you explain precisely how this will kill the web but the status quo where everyone uses Flash / Silverlight instead of the web stack does not?
- the_ancient 13y ago
  Flash is dying Silverlight is already dead, There was a window to kill DRM, Tim Berners-Lee should have called the MPAA bluff.. The MPAA needs the internet far more than the internet needs the MPAA and their content EME goes far far far far beyond just allowing netflix to claim HTML5 Compatibility when EME is in the spec, the Open Web is dead...
camillomiller 13y ago
Cool how "google's awful monopoly in search and online profiling for advertising purposes" didn't get a place in your list.

rimantas 13y ago

Please tell me more how any of this will kill the web. Me using DRM somehow kill all the web sites not using it? Walled gardens? I guess this phrase has lost all the meaning by now and is just thrown around as if it means something. Does Apple limit which web sites you can visit on iPad? Or maybe, just maybe Apple actually helped the web by releasing the first phone with truly capable browser? What has Facebook to do with it? It is just a successful product, do you also go around shouting that Adobe is killing the design industry, just because majority of the work is done in Photoshop? Also, your lament about walled gardens and then whining about being truly secure and private does not really compute. I guess I have much more privacy inside the Apple's garden than in an open land owned by Google. Also, looks that you have no idea how much work Apple has done to propel the things that we now take for granted: canvas element, CSS transforms and animations, all the initial work on WebKit before Google joined in (yes, I know it is based on KHTML, but it has none of the aforementioned staff before). There is no wonder you don't know the solution: it is hard do find a solution to nonexistent problems. No matter what you think, technology is not a zero sum game, and the web is not supposed to rule it all.

nakedrobot2 13y ago
When a concerted effort is made by an industry leader to kill open standards in favor of locking down users to their ecosystem (or "stack" as bruce sterling puts it) http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/bruce-sterling-on-why-it-stopped-making-sense-to-talk-about-the-internet-in-2012/266674/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/bruce-... http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-sxsw2013-closing-remarks-by-bruce-sterling/ http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-sxsw2...
- Retric 13y ago
  It's not zero sum. High quality walled gardens push the 'open' world just as much as high quality 'open' solutions push walled gardens. Consider as much as people complain about walled gardens DNS is quietly backing the 'open' web because some things really do work better as a walled gardens.

userbinator 13y ago

Don't forget browser vendors slowly removing features "that should be developer-only", the lack of any real choice in browsers (there's only 3 or 4 major browsers, which is not that much better than a monopoly, and they're all heading in a similar direction), and the growing mass of (needless?) complexity that they're becoming. The Web started out being simple, so the barriers to entry were low and people easily got into writing pages to share information with others. Now anyone who wants to build a website gets bombarded with dozens (if not hundreds) of frameworks, libraries, application platform, etc. and it makes them feel like they have to somehow learn and use all of this new stuff, because they're given the impression (mostly from big commercial sites) that they have to do so or their site will "look outdated". I think we should encourage more "just writing webpages", with an emphasis on (mostly static) content, and less on the "app-ification" currently going on. As much as this is probably not a popular opinion here, I think the days of Geocities and the like, with almost everyone wanting to --- and easily accomplishing --- the task of writing webpages, was when the Web was much closer to its goals. Admittedly, these "amateurs" didn't have the best design for their sites, and browsers were less featureful than they are today, but somehow the "roughness" and "wild" nature of those days felt like far more of a user-empowering Web than it is today.

blt 13y ago
I agree with your basic stance, but I think that most people who would have used Geocities in the 90s use Tumblr or Wordpress/Blogger now.
jaimebuelta 13y ago
I think that now the barrier of entry to post information is WAY lower than it was in Geocities era. We have now lots of ways of easy post without having to know HTML (Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Facebook for more personal stuff, etc)
- userbinator 13y ago
  Indeed, that is also partly responsible - there's less incentive for the public to learn HTML, and instead they will feel more inclined to rely on these frameworks/applications/services. The barrier of entry to just getting your opinion published has lowered; but the barrier of entry to making your own site and being a webmaster has gone in the opposite direction. I think that is largely how the Web is becoming more closed.

acdha 13y ago

> The Web is in great danger of "dying" partly because of Tim's awful endorsement of DRM baked into HTML5 Can you explain precisely how this will kill the web but the status quo where everyone uses Flash / Silverlight instead of the web stack does not?

the_ancient 13y ago
Flash is dying Silverlight is already dead, There was a window to kill DRM, Tim Berners-Lee should have called the MPAA bluff.. The MPAA needs the internet far more than the internet needs the MPAA and their content EME goes far far far far beyond just allowing netflix to claim HTML5 Compatibility when EME is in the spec, the Open Web is dead...

camillomiller 13y ago

Cool how "google's awful monopoly in search and online profiling for advertising purposes" didn't get a place in your list.